


Datalogs from the Lost Light

by Enfilade



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Abuse of Authority, Bigotry & Prejudice, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Illnesses, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Mild Gore, Overlord being himself, Physical Abuse, Prison, Suicide mention, Violent Thoughts, War Crimes, Whirl Being Whirl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-07-23 20:59:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 31
Words: 24,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16166903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enfilade/pseuds/Enfilade
Summary: A series of vignettes focusing on the events of the quest, each from a different character's point of view.  For easy navigation, each chapter title is the event and the point of view character's name.  Written for Lost Light Fest 2018.





	1. The Launch:  Ultra Magnus

**Author's Note:**

> So, here's my contribution to Lost Light Fest 2018: Each day, a vignette focusing on one event from the quest, from the point of view of a different character. 
> 
> A note for clarity - These vignettes are from the point of view of a particular character, at the time the event occurred. The earlier in the story it takes place, the more likely it is that the point of view character will have changed, learned and grown in the time since.

The Launch: Ultra Magnus 

Ultra Magnus had the terrible feeling that he’d made a big mistake. 

Bumblebee wanted to govern Cybertron in a “new way.” Ultra Magnus had asked what that meant, and Bumblebee hadn’t been able to give him a coherent answer. He’d said things about inclusiveness and amnesty and giving the people a voice, but when it came right down to it, he’d been unable to provide any kind of document laying out exactly how those goals were to be accomplished. Ultra Magnus thought that if one was going to throw out the Autobot Code, which had functioned perfectly well for the past four million years, one ought to have at least developed a replacement. In the absence of new legislation, Ultra Magnus realized that Bumblebee intended to make it up as he went along. 

Just the thought made Ultra Magnus shudder. 

So at first, Rodimus’s plan had made much more sense. Locate the Knights of Cybertron, re-establish the old ways, and bring them back home. Ultra Magnus had been sure that by the time of their return, Cybertron would have fallen into chaos thanks to the lack of structure and societal organization. 

The Knights’ government had to be an improvement on even the Autobot Code. Cybertopia was an ideal society, if the rumours were true. Surely such a society had a very precise code governing even the smallest of interactions. Paradise, indeed. 

And if the Knights were a myth….well, at least the _Lost Light_ had to be better than Cybertron under Bumblebee. 

Right? 

In the past twenty hours, there had been an explosion, an uncontrolled jump, a hull breach, a navigation failure, a stowaway, an amnesiac theoretician pursued by forces unknown (this was getting ridiculous), and worst of all, Ultra Magnus had read the crew manifest. 

If he’d seen this motley collection of miscreants, oddballs and general troublemakers, he never would have set foot on this vessel. 

But no, Rodimus had “recruited from the crowd,” meaning there was no manifest until Red Alert constructed it at the door, meaning Ultra Magnus hadn’t been able to veto any of the selections, meaning he was now trapped aboard this ship of fools, chasing a legend, not even sure where they were, let alone where they were going. 

It was enough to make him almost grateful for the sparkeater. 

Contain the crew, hunt down the agitator, restrain him, administer punishment. The tasking was comforting in its familiarity. 

Other than the “sparkeater” bit. 

This quest was getting _increasingly_ ridiculous, and they hadn’t even been gone for a full day. 

Yes, Ultra Magnus had made a big mistake. 

  



	2. The Sparkeater:  Rodimus

The Sparkeater: Rodimus 

Rodimus had the terrible feeling that he’d made a big mistake. 

Really, he shouldn’t. A hull breach like that, with only two fatalities? Nobody could ask for more. That situation should have ended up much worse than it did. And his cunning plan to stop the sparkeater had worked, too. The sparkeater that nobody had foreseen. Even Red Alert hadn’t thought to sweep the entire ship for enemies, and if _Red Alert_ hadn’t thought to do it, who would have? Heck, that’s why Rodimus had made Red Alert Chief of Security in the first place: to think of these things. 

None of this was his fault. 

If only he could believe it. 

The fact remained: five of his crew were dead. Polaris and Hyperion from the hull breach, Ore from the quantum engine, and Animus and Shock from the sparkeater. At this rate, his whole crew would be dead in 41 more days. 

_You’re supposed to be looking after them._

And he’d intended to make it right, he really had. That’s why he’d been willing to act as the bait to lure the sparkeater next to the engine block. If his plan went wrong, the only person getting killed would be _him_. 

It wasn’t his fault that the sparkeater had gone after Rung instead. 

Rodimus let out his breath slowly. Guilt churned in his fuel tanks. Ultra Magnus had been right. He shouldn’t have grabbed Rung like that. Shouldn’t have forced him to be the bait. If the sparkeater had been a little faster, Rung would be dead now. 

_What else could I have done? The sparkeater wanted Rung. I was right there and Rung was all it cared about. And I didn’t have time to explain to Rung that he needed to lure the sparkeater over to the engine. Even if I had time, how could a scrawny guy like Rung pin the sparkeater against the engine while Perceptor did the jump? He couldn’t. He’d have ended up just like Ore. Or else the sparkeater would’ve devoured him._

_It had to be me. I had to lure the sparkeater close enough to grab it and I had to be the one holding it against the engine block. If I hadn’t grabbed Rung, the sparkeater would’ve just kept chasing him. It would have caught him, it would have eaten him, and it would have gone on to the next brightest spark…_

_…who also might not be me._

Rodimus had carried the Matrix. Why had the sparkeater chosen a nobody like Rung instead? 

_Why am I not the brightest spark?_

_Do I even have any right to lead this quest?_

His new arms throbbed. He dialed up his sensors, embracing the pain. He deserved it. 

It was too late to quit now. They were on a ship in search of the Knights of Cybertron, and the 202 survivors – plus Skids and Cyclonus – were counting on him to lead them. He’d just have to do better. 

He _had_ to. 


	3. Delphi:  Drift

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note for clarity - These vignettes are from the point of view of a particular character, at the time the event occurred. The earlier in the story it takes place, the more likely it is that the point of view character will have changed, learned and grown in the time since.

Delphi: Drift 

Who’s afraid of the DJD? 

Anyone with a functioning brain module. 

Drift really didn’t like Ratchet asking him about the DJD. Every day he did his best to forget that the DJD existed. Whenever he remembered, he always ended up wondering just _where_ his name was on Tarn’s infamous List. Sooner or later, the DJD would come to track him down. The only question was _when_. 

If Drift let himself think about _where_ and _when_ , it always led to a lot of other awkward questions. 

When he thought about _where_ on the List he was, he always hoped that Deathsaurus’s name was above his. It would take the DJD a very long time to travel out to the Galactic Rim, and even longerto dispatch Deathsaurus and his loyal-to-the-death crew. If Deathsaurus was half the fighter he used to be, he might very well take Tarn down with him. 

Then Drift felt guilty for hoping that his friend would bear the brunt of the DJD’s attack. 

_When_ was no better, because the DJD weren’t above a little collateral damage. Meaning anyone who associated with Drift was also at risk. 

Drift didn’t want to stop hanging out with Rodimus, and he definitely didn’t want to bring the DJD knocking on the _Lost Light_ ’s door. 

But he couldn’t exactly spend the rest of his life holed up alone on Cybertron waiting for Tarn to show up, either. 

His only two choices were to kill himself pre-emptively, or live his life as though the DJD didn’t exist and hope to Primus that Deathsaurus and his crew managed to kill the lot of them. Assuming Deathsaurus’s name was above his. 

Was it wrong to pray to the gods for someone else to die? 

Drift did it anyway, on the rare occasions he accidentally thought about the DJD. 

Ratchet had made him start praying again. 

Because here they were, _on Delphi_ , and for all Drift knew, the DJD were right here on the same planet, resupplying after their latest kill, checking their List and making plans for their next victim. Who might very well be _him_. 

This was the last place he wanted to be. He should be hidden away aboard the _Lost Light_ , distracting himself by helping Rodimus or, hells, he had a small stash of florian. A _very_ small stash. And he really ought to be using it to commune with the ancestors and seek the Knights of Cybertron, but hell, there was no reason he couldn’t do that at a time when it would be really nice to get high, right? Just high enough to forget about the DJD? 

Florian wasn’t addictive. It wasn’t anywhere near as strong as circuit boosters or the other hard drugs he’d done on the street. The Circle of Light had used it regularly for religious purposes. He’d gotten his stash from Wing. He’d been saving it for the right time, which might very well be now. 

Except that Ratchet was the one who’d insisted on stopping off at Delphi. Ratchet was the one who had to personally investigate the message he’d received from the Wreckers: Declassified downloads. 

And Drift couldn’t let him go alone. 

Nor did he dare go in any condition other than his fighting best. 

_Ratchet_ . The medic who’d saved his life back in the Dead End. The first person to care about him when there was no possible advantage to doing so. 

Hell, he’d been nothing but trouble for Ratchet ever since. 

So he couldn’t lose himself in florian after all. He had to _protect Ratchet_. It was the only repayment that Ratchet would ever accept. 

He would keep Ratchet safe. 

No matter the cost. 


	4. Stranded Scavengers:  Crankcase

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, today’s the first day where event and character don’t match up. You’ll be seeing Ratchet on “Adventures of Ratchet and Drift” day. In the meantime, the POV Stranded Scavenger is…Crankcase!

Stranded Scavengers: Crankcase 

Surely Misfire wouldn’t just keep adopting every Primus-forsaken vagrant the Scavengers came across. 

Crankcase was hungry. He’d had a little bit of fuel from their salvaging, but the K-Con’s innermost energon would have filled his fuel tank. _Filled_ it. 

Of course, unlike their other salvage, the K-Con was still alive and wearing a Decepticon badge. It wasn’t as though he were wearing an Autobrand. _Mistakes_ could be made when survivors wore an Autobrand. 

Krok was adamant that _mistakes_ were not made when mechs wore a Decepticon sigil. 

Crankcase threw some scraps into the campfire and wondered why in the Pit he was still hanging around with Krok. Krok had _hijacked_ him. He had been flying a prison transport, just doing his job, and then Krok and Spinister had busted in, held him at gunpoint, freed the prisoner, and stuffed _him_ into the prison cell. 

If anything, he should _hate_ Krok and the other Scavengers for messing up his so-called life. Despite the injury he’d sustained from Thunderwing, back when he was part of Darkwing’s infiltration unit, he’d managed to get reassigned into the pilot corps. Cargo detail, but that was a start. If he did a good job, he could work his way up to a better class of vessel. 

He’d worked his way up to prison transport and then the hijacking had happened. At least he’d gotten to keep the _Weak Anthropic Principle_. Turned out Krok had thought Misfire would be able to fly it. Meanwhile, Misfire had thought his rescuers would be able to fly it. Bah. They’d had no choice but to let Crankcase out. 

That had left Crankcase with a choice to make. 

Let the hijackers—and the prisoner—get away? The DJD had put mechanisms on their List for lesser crimes than that. 

But Crankcase really wasn’t thrilled at the idea of trying to fight the hijackers either. Three against one weren’t particularly great odds. 

So when Misfire let him out of the brig and told him to fly, he flew. And when Misfire told him to stop sitting around on his aft and help them scavenge, he helped. And once he became an accessory to whatever crimes the others had committed, well, at that point the best he could do was keep running and hope the DJD never caught them up. 

Crankcase sat and listened to the K-Con talking and realized that this loser didn’t have anywhere else to go. They didn’t make you a K-Con if they expected you to survive. 

This Fulcrum guy was going to stick around. Crankcase was certain of it. 

You couldn’t get a bigger loser than a dud K-Con. Unless you counted the surgeon who shot inanimate objects for “looking at him funny.” Or the strategist who believed his dead squadmates were still alive. Or the lying Duocon whose transformation sequences betrayed him. Or the Decepticon who couldn’t hit the broad side of a storage shed or, hell, he was such a bad shot he couldn’t even hit the ground. 

Or, Crankcase supposed, the Triggercon off-road vehicle with half his head missing, whose only joy in a joyless universe was flying. Who’d probably never fly again if he returned to the pilot corps and told them he’d been hanging out with the very mechs who’d stolen his prison transport. 

Everyone in this unit was a loser, and a mess, and on a fast road to nowhere. If Crankcase were smart, he’d leave while the leaving was good. 

Except he didn’t have anywhere else to go, either. 

So he supposed he’d better be grateful for Misfire, who’d reached through the doors of the brig and said, “Hey, if we let you out, will you fly where we say?” 

They’d hijacked him. He’d had every reason to hate them, to spite them even if it cost his life. Krok and Spinister had been skeptical about freeing him. But Misfire… 

Misfire would adopt _anyone_. 


	5. Shadowplay:  Rewind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Dratchet bias in effect for this chapter

Shadowplay: Rewind 

Rewind didn’t think of himself as nosy. 

It wasn’t his fault if he had a huge database of publically available information. If mechs didn’t want to see themselves in his documentaries, then they ought not show up in places where public recording equipment was in use. He wasn’t invading anyone’s privacy. 

It particularly wasn’t his fault if he had a wealth of information related to Chromedome and Prowl. 

Those two had been partners in the mechaforensics division. As a result, they’d appeared in all kinds of CCTV footage. None of that was Rewind’s fault. It was right there to be reviewed by anyone with access. 

Right? 

Rewind supposed that, under duress, he’d have to admit that he’d gone out of his way to acquire data with regards to Chromedome. Which, because of Chromedome’s job, often also included Prowl. 

_Somebody_ had to keep an eye on Prowl, for Chromedome’s sake. Chromedome gave his ex way too much latitude, considering that Prowl was the sort of person willing to weaponize anything and anyone in pursuit of his goals. 

At any rate, Rewind had tried his best to help rewire Rung’s brain without involving Chromedome. 

First, he’d enlisted Blaster, Sunstreaker, Perceptor, Siren and Gears. 

And when that didn’t work, he’d tried Atomizer, Xaaron, Dipstick, Sprocket and Slapdash. 

Finally, out of desperation, he’d called Ratchet, Drift, Skids, Whirl, and Chromedome. 

He supposed he always could’ve just read Rung a story, but truth be told, he wanted to see how the dynamics in the zones of influence he’d collected would play out among the groups in the present day. Wanted to see, and wanted to film. And he couldn’t tell this story without Chromedome. 

He hoped it would be worth listening to Chromedome talk about his ex. 

As the various raconteurs began telling their parts of the tale, Rewind noticed something curious. 

Ratchet. 

And Drift. 

Rewind had thought they didn’t like each other. Ratchet didn’t bother to hide his impatience with Drift’s religious beliefs. Drift had gone so far as to draw his sword on Ratchet back on Theophany. But now… 

Rewind would have to watch the footage of tonight’s get-together again later, and examine it very carefully. Because if he didn’t know better he thought he’d just heard Drift admitting to thinking about Ratchet’s words to him over and over again. Thinking about them for more than four million years. 

And Ratchet had muttered something in reply, so quiet Rewind hadn’t heard it. Maybe the recording had picked it up. 

Surely they couldn’t be… 

But Rewind remembered the confused, wistful glances that Prowl gave Chromedome behind his back in so much of that old footage. And the hopeful expressions that Chromedome gave Prowl, a lifetime ago before he and Rewind had ever met. Rewind swore he’d seen Ratchet and Drift giving one another those same looks tonight. It had been fleeting, and subtle, and anyone would’ve missed it. 

But most people didn’t have cameras recording all the time, or an extensive library of footage to view and review. 

Rewind wasn’t nosy. He just needed something to think about other than Prowl. 


	6. Hedonia Shore Leave:  Cyclonus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wish I had time to respond to all the kind comments I've had on these ficlets. Keeping up with a post a day is a big challenge for me. Please know your encouragement is very much appreciated.

Cyclonus stood in the Temple of the Raging Prism and wondered why he was less than enthused by the reverent silence all around him. 

He ought to be grateful. There was precious little quiet on the _Lost Light_. Particularly with his obnoxious roommate constantly nattering in his audios. 

Scourge had known when to hold his voxcoder. Cyclonus had passed many a cycle in Scourge’s presence where neither had felt the need to speak. Everything they had needed to say to one another was said by their proximity to one another. 

Cyclonus thought about Scourge and wondered if he was feeling _lonely_. 

He’d clung to the _Lost Light_ ’s hull on impulse, unable to bear another day on the burned-out hulk of a world that had once been his Cybertron. He’d clung to his petty vendetta with Whirl because it gave him something to do, something to think about other than what he’d lost. He wondered if he would be here if Scourge were still alive. Somehow, he doubted it. 

And now… 

Now he wondered if it was possible that he _missed_ Tailgate. 

He shouldn’t. Tailgate was an idiot and a liar. Cyclonus did not suffer fools. He folded his hands behind his back and wondered if he were so desperate for a link to his own time that he was willing to put up with Tailgate’s moronic prattle just so he could look at the little bot and think _yes, here’s someone who remembers what I remember._

Cyclonus wondered just how much Tailgate _did_ remember. Certainly not the Ark. Cyclonus had met Tailpipe. There was no Tailgate on board. 

Tailgate was an unnecessary irritant, and not worth his time. 

Except… 

Tailgate had invited him to his Autobrand ceremony. Cyclonus had gone. He’d looked at his hands in the dim lighting of their shared hab suite and the silence had worn on him then, as it wore on him now. 

He’d gone because he’d had nothing better to do. 

After Temptoria, Tailgate had offered Cyclonus a vial of his innermost energon. 

Nobody else had. Nobody else cared if Cyclonus were alive or dead. Cyclonus suspected some of the crew would have been happier if he had perished. 

But Tailgate would have missed him. 

Cyclonus exited the temple and headed to the gift shop, wondering if he’d taken leave of his senses entirely. He had no use for knick-knacks; he placed little value on material things. 

But Tailgate would be enamoured of any one of the baubles on the shelves. 

It was an exchange, that was all. A trinket in return for the vial of innermost energon that he’d shattered. Cyclonus certainly wasn’t about to share his own innermost energon. That was…too much. Too soon. It suggested a connection that Cyclonus wasn’t comfortable pursuing any further. 

This was just a matter of fair equivalence. A little something to say that he’d been thinking of Tailgate, the way Tailgate had thought of him while he was in the medbay. Then the scales would be balanced and Cyclonus could go back to contemplating the elaborate, protracted death he had in store for Whirl. 

Strangely, the thought was not as satisfying as it used to be. 


	7. Monster in the Basement:  Overlord

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for Overlord being himself.
> 
> *

Monster in the Basement: Overlord 

_Kill me._

This was no existence. Bound immobilized in a slow cell, abandoned in solitary. And Megatron was dead. He had no distractions from his contemplation of how history had passed him by. He’d never crush Megatron now. 

The most powerful of Megatron’s Phase Sixers had only one weakness. This prison seemed designed to exploit that weakness specifically. Overlord wondered if that choice had been intentional. He could admire that kind of cruelty. 

It would be a shame if it was accidental. If the Autobots had blundered into inflicting such an exquisite torment, ignorant of what they had done. That would be ugly and graceless, an affront to a master of the art. 

Down here, alone, slowed down, in the dark, there was nothing to distract Overlord from the demons in his own mind. 

On the battlefields of a thousand worlds he had blotted out the demons’s screams in a litany of blood and fire. In Garrus-9 he had pulled the monsters out of his own head and placed them in Fortress Maximus’s mind. Even in the rare moments when he found himself alone, he could hold the beasts at bay by acting out his plans, knowing that everything he did brought him one step closer to getting what he needed most. 

Someday he and Megatron might perish together, a glorious immolation. 

And the demons, at last, would be silent. 

But in the basement of the Lost Light there was no blood, no sacrificial scapegoat, no ability to advance a plan. There was nothing but hanging immobilized in this harness in the dark and doing the only thing he could to bring him any closer to the elusive contentment he hoped to find in the second before his spark guttered out. 

“Kill me.” 

Overlord discovered that he did, indeed, possess some capacity to mourn. The feeling he got when he thought about dying at hands other than Megatron’s…could that be _sorrow_? 

_Sorrow_ made him want to live, so that none of those things would ever come to pass. 

But the torment of the demons in his mind was too extreme. Suffering washed away sorrow. His grief was meaningless. His agony was unbearable. He needed _escape_. Oblivion. The only kind of peace that could ever exist for the likes of him. 

If he was fortunate, they would kill him quickly, he thought. 

But then the Autobot let slip that Megatron still functioned, and then… _oh, then_ … 

…That changed everything. 

  



	8. Adventures:  Ratchet

Adventures of Ratchet and Drift: Ratchet 

“I will if you will,” Drift said. 

Ratchet just stared at Drift, asking himself yet again how he’d come to be in these ridiculous circumstances. Honestly, it should have been Rodimus coming after Drift, not him. Rodimus was the one who’d exiled Drift. Rodimus was the one who’d allowed Drift to take the fall for the Overlord plan. The plan cooked up by Prowl and approved by Rodimus himself. As far as Ratchet was concerned, Rodimus ought to have tried to find Drift himself, after turning over captaincy of the _Lost Light_ to… 

…well, perhaps not to Megatron. Not _just_ Megatron, at any rate. 

Ultra Magnus? Could he keep Megatron in line? 

Ratchet began to have second thoughts about this idea. Ultra Magnus was a good mech, reliable and trustworthy, but not exactly what one would call an inspirational leader. Ultra Magnus also seemed vulnerable to Megatron’s air of authority. 

Hound, ex-Primal Vanguard, then? 

Senator (retired) Crosscut? 

Emirate Xaaron? 

Ratchet tried to think of a mech who he’d trust to keep Megatron in line, and only one name presented itself. 

Very well. In a perfect world, people would take responsibility for their own decisions. Optimus Prime would be keeping an optic on the allegedly reformed Megatron, and Rodimus would be locating Drift to issue an apology. 

But this wasn’t a perfect world, and so Ratchet—who begrudgingly admitted he’d needed the push to finally relinquish the CMO’s position—had taken it upon himself to set straight what Rodimus had permitted to go wrong. 

Ratchet had found Drift, and survived a number of outrageous escapades that Drift had led him into. 

And now… 

“Come on,” Drift coaxed. “How long has it been since you had a frame upgrade?” 

“I’ve had a frame upgrade,” Ratchet said in protest. It wasn’t a lie, thought it was a very selective truth. 

“Yeah. Right after the war started,” Drift shot back. 

Ratchet had nothing to say to that. 

“You need a frame upgrade,” Drift pressed. “You’ve been running yourself ragged for four million years.” 

“My hands are fine,” Ratchet muttered. 

“Pharma’s hands,” Drift corrected. “What about the rest of you?” 

Ratchet hated when the kid had a point. He hadn’t been all that much easier on the rest of his body, either. 

“And you can’t fix yourself. So, why not get someone else to do it for you?” 

“Let’s get back to the original topic,” Ratchet said, trying to change the subject. “ _You_ are the one who’s been neglecting recommended self-maintenance. _You_ are the one who’s been pushing his frame into extreme, one might even say reckless, behaviour. _You_ are the subject of this conversation and _you_ are the one who needs a complete overhaul.” 

“Everything you just said about me applies equally to _you_ ,” Drift said stubbornly, getting right up in Ratchet’s face. “So. Let’s fix both our problems. You, me, a reputable garage on Ritaxa, full rebuilds.” 

Ritaxa. Ritaxa was known for quality service to mechanicals. For once Drift wasn’t suggesting something dangerous or foolish. 

But he was suggesting something expensive. 

“I can’t afford,” Ratchet began, and then Drift reached into his subspace and pressed something into Ratchet’s palm. 

A gold card. 

“I said I’d pay you back someday.” Drift stared into Ratchet’s optics aggressively, but there was a tremor in his voice. “Someday is here.” 

There were a lot of things Ratchet could say: that Drift didn’t owe him anything, or that he needed to know how Drift had earned that kind of money, or that it would be a few thousand years yet before another part of his body fell into severe disrepair. 

“All right,” Ratchet said. 


	9. Luna-1 Found:  Tailgate

Luna-1 Found: Tailgate 

As last hurrahs went, being part of the expedition team to Luna-1 was a pretty good one. Even if they had wound up in a cell. 

People had been looking for Luna-1 for _millions_ of years. Dominus Ambus hadn’t been able to find it. _Thunderclash_ hadn’t been able to find it. Having his name on the list of the people who’d rediscovered Luna-1 would more than make up for _not_ having his name on the crew manifest for the original Ark. He was going to go down in history, and he was going to be remembered. 

Still. 

Tailgate figured the best part of rediscovering Luna-1 would’ve been walking into a bar on Cybertron and having a hush fall over the crowd. Two mechs near the door would argue about whether or not it was really _him_ , Tailgate, _that_ Tailgate. Someone in the crowd would work up the courage to ask, and he would smile and say yes, he was _that_ Tailgate. 

Someone would ask him a question— _what was Luna-1 like?_ —and someone else would buy him a drink, and he’d spend the night reliving this glorious moment, the day he’d made history. 

Tailgate realized he was going to miss out on the good part. 

When it came right down to it, Tailgate decided he’d trade this historic moment for just a little bit more of his ordinary day-to-day life. Hanging out in the oil reservoir with Swerve. Sharing a hab suite with Cyclonus, even if he _was_ cold and distant and cranky all the time. He’d even miss Nutjob, at least in the helicopter’s saner moments. And movie nights—a tradition they’d kept going in Rewind’s memory. ****

Tailgate curled up against the wall of the cell and wondered if anyone would bother doing anything in _his_ memory. 

He thought about Cyclonus, who’d managed to evade capture. He ought to be glad that Cyclonus was still free—he _was_ glad, really! But part of him still wished that Cyclonus was here with him. He didn’t have all that much time left. He’d hoped to spend at least a little bit of that time in Cyclonus’s company. 

Tailgate remembered the last time he’d seen Cyclonus, with that series of fresh scratches marring his face. Tailgate wondered if Cyclonus and Nutjob had gotten into another scrap, but discarded the notion. Nutjob didn’t have enough claws for that many scratches. 

He hoped that Cyclonus was okay, wherever he was. And that he’d be here soon, to rescue them. And maybe, just maybe, the reason the rescue was taking so long was because Cyclonus was scouring the Seething Moon for a cure for cybercrosis. 

_Hope is a lie_ , Cyclonus had said, but with every passing second Tailgate realized that he didn’t want his last hurrah to be as part of the expedition team that found Luna-1. He was more than willing to give up his notoriety and free drinks for even just a few more days on board the _Lost Light_. Polaris, Hyperion, Shock, Ore, Animus, Pipes, Triopodeca, Rewind…they’d all gotten funerals, and their names were inscribed on a plaque next to the bridge door. Having his name on that plaque…that would be enough. 

_Hope is a lie_ , Cyclonus had said, but Tailgate hoped anyway. 


	10. Making a Movie:  Skids

Making a Movie: Skids 

“I couldn’t believe it,” Skids exclaimed, “when the Circle of Light started booing.” 

Unbidden, his hands curled into fists. 

“I just wanted to…to…” 

~scum~ 

Skids took a deep breath and forced his fingers to uncurl. It wouldn’t do for him to take his anger out on Rung. 

“Sorry.” 

Rung did not seem perturbed. “You sound angry,” he observed. 

“I _was_ angry,” Skids admitted. “I _am_ angry. Rewind was a _good_ director. Even if “Little Victories” _was_ the rough cut. It’s not as though Rodimus had just given handheld cameras to…to Tailgate and Swerve and told them to record him…us…doing _awesome_ things! I mean, _that_ would have been a disaster. But Rewind did a good job. Even if he hadn’t gotten the chance to edit it properly.” 

Skids wished he had explained _why_ the film was still a rough cut before Blaster had started to play the feature. Maybe then the Circle would have been more understanding. “Rewind produced a movie that, in my opinion, is an accurate and honest portrayal of life aboard the _Lost Light_. He doesn’t deserve to be booed for that.” 

“Consider this,” Rung said quietly. “Are you angry because you believe the Circle of Light have shown disrespect to Rewind’s memory? Or are you angry because Rewind’s film reflects us truthfully and it is this crew, and not Rewind’s skills, that the Circle of Light has found fault with?” 

Skids felt his jaw drop. 

He thought back to that moment when the Circle of Light had started walking out…before the movie had even ended. He’d been fighting hard to keep his temper, but he remembered that the final dedication was at the end of the film. The Circle of Light had not stayed to the point where they would have discovered that the director was deceased. 

Furthermore, Skids didn’t remember any derogatory comments about Rewind in particular. One person had called the film itself “rubbish,” but he hadn’t known that it was a rough cut, or how come there had never been a final version. 

There were other words stoking Skids’s temper now. 

“They said we were all cracked in the head,” Skids said quietly. “That there isn’t a normal bot among us.” 

“And how does that make you feel?” 

“That it’s the _point_.” Skids’s hands curled back into fists again. “Do you honestly think Prowl would _ever_ have sent me on a mission with these huge holes in my memory? He’d have declared me unfit for duty. I’d be sitting around a convalescent hospice on Cybertron going out of my mind with boredom.” Skids rose to his feet, pacing, trying to bleed off the adrenaloids pumping into his system. “There really isn’t a normal bot among us, and that’s _why I belong here_.” He drew a ragged breath. “Because Rodimus gave me a chance despite my flaws. Because maybe, all together….all together, maybe we can fix things.” 

“What things are you hoping to fix, Skids?”

“Cybertron. Myself. Each other. I don’t know.” 

“Perhaps the Circle of Light doesn’t feel the need to fix those things.” 

“Heh. Yeah.” Skids felt a smile alight on his lips as he thought about that. “The Circle of Light can join up with Thunderclash and see if their religion is legit. They’re going to have a crappy time if it’s not. But I…I don’t care.” 

As he spoke the words, Skids realized they were true. He repeated them, just as a test. 

“I don’t care.” 

The words rang true. 

“I don’t care if we find the Knights of Cybertron. I don’t care if they’re not everything the Circle of Light wants them to be. What I care is…” He took a deep breath. “I want my memory back. I want _all of us_ to get the things we’re looking for.” He glanced at Rung. “And I want the movie to do well, when we take it back to Cybertron.” 

“Oh? Why’s that?” 

“Because you’re in it.” Skids offered a smile. “So people can watch it and remember you.” 


	11. The Second Lost Light:  Tesarus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is supposed to be a comedic chapter, but it's the DJD, so...
> 
> Canon death, canon typical violence, drug use mention, torture mention, the DJD being themselves

The Second Lost Light: Tesarus 

Tesarus was _super_ excited about getting to kill Overlord. 

He was also just a teeny, tiny bit nervous. 

Because Overlord wasn’t exactly your run-of-the-mill Decepticon. That was part of what was going to make this kill so satisfying. These days most of the mechs on the List ran for their lives, with the rest split evenly between hiding and begging. Oh, a few fought back when they realized nothing else was going to work, but the odds weren’t in their favour, and they knew it. 

Overlord was definitely going to fight. And it was entirely possible that the odds might be in his favour. And Tesarus wasn’t particularly accustomed to fights that were _fair_. 

Tesarus glanced over at Helex, sitting on the bench beside him, and wondered what would happen if he insinuated that he might, maybe, be just the slightest bit concerned about fighting Overlord, and did Helex think that Overlord could, potentially, kill one or maybe even all of the DJD? 

Then Tesarus remembered that the new Vos had alluded to possibly being somewhat worried about fighting Black Shadow. Tesarus had even understood why: it wasn’t that Vos was all that big, and his presence in the DJD was more about the kind of art he practiced in his lab on the sort of targets who had earned slow, protracted deaths, and less about pure battlefield force. No sooner had Vos admitted his anxiety than Helex, along with Tesarus himself, had laughed his head off. Vos was _still_ living that one down. 

No, Tesarus wasn’t going to admit for even a second that he might have even _thought about_ being afraid of Overlord. 

* 

Tesarus was fortunate that Tarn seemed to have, if not _similar concerns_ , at least a healthy respect for Overlord’s abilities. 

Because Tesarus had never had so much Nuke in his life. 

Ordinarily Tarn was stingy with the stuff. He said it was because there was such a small and limited quantity—no more where that came from. Tesarus figured it was more because Tarn wanted the bulk of it for himself. Tesarus, Kaon, Helex and Vos knew that Tarn did the stuff in his quarters when he thought nobody was looking. Worst-kept secret ever. Tesarus didn’t want to be there when Nickel found out that Tarn had more than one addiction. 

In the meantime, though, raw power fired up Tesarus’s internal systems, and pure aggression coursed through his circuits. He felt that he could take on an army. An army of Overlords. 

He was ready. 

* 

“Oops,” Helex said. 

Tesarus turned around. The Nuke was wearing off, and his head felt as though he’d stuffed it into his own grinder. “What?” 

Vos pointed at the dead Autobot on the floor. More specifically, at his faceplate, which had been torn off in the fight. More precisely, at the Decepticon insignia on the back of that faceplate. 

Tesarus examined the mangled corpse and thought he recognized…. “That’s our mole, isn’t it? The guy who tipped us off about Overlord?” 

“Yeah,” Helex admitted. 

“Oops.” Tesarus wondered if Helex or himself had been responsible for the fatal wounds. He wondered if it mattered. “How pissed do you think Tarn’s gonna be?” 

“If word gets out that we kill our informants and nobody informs for us any more? Probably real pissed.” 

Vos hissed something in Primal Vernacular. 

“We can’t _not tell him_ ,” Tesarus argued. “You know how mad he’d be if he found out we were trying to deceive him?” 

Helex scowled at Vos. “Let’s put it this way. How do you think Scissorsaw here got the _last_ Tesarus’s job?” 

Tesarus hadn’t known what had happened to his predecessor, and now he was sorry to have found out. 

Vos’s whole frame sagged. Tesarus imagined he probably looked the same. 

* 

They found Tarn kneeling in front of what looked like a storage closet, in front of three corpses. Tesarus recognized the middle corpse. Deadlock had been close to the top of the List. The other two were Autobots, beneath his notice. 

But not beneath Tarn’s. 

Tarn reached out to touch the hand of the Autobot on the left. Tesarus noticed that the body sported medic’s crosses. The optic sockets had been blown out from within. Tarn had left this particular kill to Kaon, then. 

Kaon stood silently some distance away, holding the Pet on a short leash. 

Tarn must have heard Tesarus, Helex and Vos approach, because he began speaking: loud enough to be heard, but still in an unpleasantly soft tone. Tesarus preferred when Tarn shouted at him. Tarn’s shouts descended on a mech’s audios like thunder, but his whispers were the smooth smothering sound of oblivion. It made Tesarus’s spark ache. 

“I’ll kill the lot of you if you say anything,” Tarn said quietly, “but I feel somewhat badly about this one.” His hand caressed the medic’s cheek. 

Tesarus didn’t know _what_ was going on there, and he was far too afraid to ask. It was Kaon who broke the silence. 

“That was long ago,” Kaon said as he drew close, “and far away.” 

“I didn’t even realize until after I’d killed him,” Tarn continued. “Too much Nuke, I suppose.” 

Tesarus began to feel better about his odds of surviving the Brainstorm incident. 

Kaon laid his hand on Tarn’s shoulder. “It’s not your fault. Ratchet made his choice.” 

“Time for us to make ours,” Helex said, removing the skullcap from the Autobot to the right. He never was one to waste a brain. “Not it.” 

“Our choice for what?” Tesarus asked. 

“Who tells Nickel why we’ve all got hangovers from the Pit.” 

“Not it,” Tesarus said, at the same time as Kaon. Meanwhile, Vos hissed something in Primal Vernacular, and Tarn started giving them all That Look which said that _he_ absolutely was _not_ explaining this to Nickel, “not it” be damned. 


	12. Past of Megatron:  Whirl

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's Whirl, so, suicidal ideation, homicidal ideation, violence, abuse of prisoner, and Whirl being himself.

These days it wasn’t easy to find a volunteer to beat up Megatron. 

Which was probably why Getaway had responded so eagerly when Whirl had told him that _not only_ was he prepared to support anyone who was willing to do whatever it took to get Megatron off the _Lost Light_ and back to the punishment he so richly deserved, but he wanted to _help_. Whirl had even volunteered to… 

_…had_ he? 

Or had Whirl only expressed a fantasy about pounding the slag out of Megatron? 

Heh. Maybe it had been a _memory._

Whirl examined an arrow and supposed that anyone with a conscience might feel just a little bit bad about causing the war by teaching Megatron that violence was an excellent way to solve problems. Of course, anyone with a conscience would probably feel just a little bit bad about beating up helpless prisoners, too. 

Whirl mostly felt bad that he’d picked the _wrong_ prisoner to help him work through his feelings about being an Enforcer for the Senate—the same Senate who had mutilated him and stripped him of his chosen career. He had a _right_ to his anger. Didn’t he? 

…and a little bit of him felt perversely flattered that he’d given Megatron the kind of experience that got immortalized in _Towards Peace_. He bet it pissed off the Decepticon scholars immensely. Imagine the likes of Thunderwing, or Lord Trannis, or, pfft, imagine _Tarn_ …reading that passage and knowing that everything their dear leader became was taught to him by _Whirl_. 

Of course, Megatron hadn’t had the good graces to mention Whirl by _name._ That ticked Whirl off all over again. 

Nope, Megatron had to go. 

Whirl plucked experimentally at the bowstring of his weapon. 

If Whirl felt badly for anything back before the war, it should be because he’d _taken his time_. He’d let Springarm interrupt him. If he’d gone into Megatron’s cell fast and hard and put his claws through some poor schmuck’s brain module like he’d wanted to, then there would never have _been_ a war. 

Whirl wouldn’t exactly say that Megatron’s continued existence was his _fault_ , exactly, but he felt enough responsibility to feel that he ought to help Getaway out. Not quite enough responsibility to overwhelm the fact that he was also ruining Megatron’s life for the _pleasure_ of it, but surely enough to be of note. 

Whirl racked his brain, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember if picking a fight with Megatron was his idea, or something that Getaway had suggested to him. It certainly _seemed_ like his kind of idea. 

Anyway, the plan was set. Ever since the launch, Whirl had full license to go out of his way to piss Megatron off enough to get him to throw a punch, and the licensing agent’s name was Getaway. 

Getaway said that as soon as Megatron attacked Whirl, Rodimus and Ultra Magnus would have no choice but to throw Megatron in the brig, call Optimus Prime, and admit that this co-captain nonsense was stupid and it was time to take care of Megatron once and for all. 

If they were lucky, Getaway said, Whirl would kill Megatron during the fight. Self-defense. Entirely justifiable. 

Whirl liked the sound of that. 

It might even be _possible_ , if the rumour was true, for Whirl to kill the Slag-Maker. If the fool’s energon that served as Megatron’s only fuel source truly did hobble the once-fearsome Decepticon. Megatron wasn’t as tough as he had been back in his youth. 

He was, however, a lot more skilled as a fighter. And a lot less reticent to use those skills. Killing him wouldn’t be easy. 

Whirl liked a challenge. 

That young miner hadn’t fought back, but he hadn’t cried out, either. What kind of satisfaction was there to be had in pounding on a target who didn’t show pain? Whirl had been frustrated and it had made him hit harder and longer. If Megatron had just given him what he’d wanted, maybe Whirl would have been satisfied enough to leave before Springarm had…before Megatron had… 

…Megatron deserved this. 

Whirl would’ve frowned if he’d had the face to do it. Working Atomizer’s bow was going to be difficult with these claws. 

_Six months_ . Who would have guessed? 

Six months of Whirl decorating Megatron’s door with graffiti and stealing his energon mug in the dining hall and saying rude things behind his back that were _just loud enough_ to be overheard. Six months of sitting up late into the night, realizing that maybe Megatron wasn’t going to lose his cool and rage. Maybe Megatron was like Cyclonus. Maybe Megatron was biding his time, waiting for his moment to strike. 

Six months of waiting for Megatron to make his move and no move ever coming. 

Well, Megatron _wasn’t_ Cyclonus. These days Cyclonus seemed uninterested in making good on his promise to kill Whirl. That was okay—the _Lost Light_ had Megatron now. _Whirl_ had Megatron now. 

And Megatron just needed a little push. 

Whirl drew the bow. Yes, this could work. Megatron was a strategist, but he was also known for his short temper. The pacifist miner in the cell—that mech was long gone. _This_ Megatron wouldn’t be able to ignore an injury to his person. Whirl would claim the arrow was an accident—his claws, don’t you know, they slipped on this bow that Atomizer had asked him to look after—and his self-defense claim would still be valid. 

Unless. 

Unless the fool’s energon didn’t really work the way everyone said it did. 

In that case Megatron really would kill him, and in that case then Megatron was biding his time at an entirely different game, and in that case if Whirl provoked a fight and got murdered and proved to everyone that Megatron had only been playing at being weak… 

…in that case Whirl would surely go down in history as a hero, and not just as the nameless monster who’d taught Megatron the joy that was to be found in putting fear into another’s optics. 

Rodimus would give him a funeral. Tailgate would cry. Cyclonus would show up and look dour and maybe even mean it a little. 

These days it wasn’t easy to find a volunteer to beat up Megatron. Nobody really believed that fool’s energon—if it was real—could make up for four million years of combat experience and an indomitable will to power. Lots of mechanisms would love to see Megatron on his knees, bleeding energon from a thousand cuts, battered and broken, begging for mercy; but none of them wanted to take the risk required to put him there. None of them wanted to gamble that Megatron, even in his hobbled state, wouldn’t kill _them_ instead. 

Because if Whirl killed Megatron, Getaway would feel they’d been lucky. 

And if Megatron killed Whirl…well, then, Whirl would be the lucky one. 


	13. Back to the Past:  Brainstorm

“So,” Brainstorm said, “what do you think would happen?” 

Perceptor rolled his one visible optic. “Nothing. Because time travel doesn’t work like that.” 

Brainstorm gagged down his impatience. He really, really needed Perceptor’s input on this matter. 

“Let’s presuppose time travel did, in fact, work like that. So, what would happen?” 

“This is a delicate point in my experiment, Brainstorm, and…” 

Brainstorm’s need had overcome his dignity several minutes ago. “Pleeeeeease?” 

Perceptor sighed. “Hypothetically speaking, you want to know what would happen if you went back in time and killed Optimus Prime before the war.” 

“Yeah.” 

“I assume we’d all be wearing purple badges.” Perceptor turned back to his experiment, and a moment later, Brainstorm realized that Perceptor was ignoring him. 

“Come on, I’m serious!” He reached out and grabbed Perceptor’s shoulder. 

Perceptor turned around, giving Brainstorm a glare that was quite honestly terrifying, providing immediate justification to all those rumours about Perceptor and the Wreckers. Brainstorm was not used to such unpleasant confrontations. There was something about Perceptor’s gaze that made Brainstorm want to turn tail and run and hide in his hab suite and not come out for a few days. Or weeks. 

_Think of Quark. Don’t lose your nerve now._

“You’re really not going to leave me alone, are you?” Perceptor asked. 

Brainstorm wrung his hands, fighting down that urge to flee—and he’d never been much of a fighter. “I need an answer to this. Bad.” 

“Why do you want to kill Optimus Prime?” 

“I _don’t_! It’s just a…a thought experiment. About time travel.” 

“Right. Then perhaps you should ask Rung, who’s more acquainted with philosophy.” 

“I don’t care if it’s right or wrong, I care about what happens next. Scientifically speaking.” 

Perceptor gave him a dirty look. 

Right. 

Autobots and Autobot morality. 

“Let’s say, um…let’s say someone I care about very much dies unless Optimus Prime dies first.” Brainstorm fidgeted. This explanation was coming entirely too close to the truth. 

“Why would....” 

“I don’t care why!” Brainstorm exploded. “Pretend whatever you want. Maybe my friend dies saving Optimus. Maybe he dies because of a mission Optimus orders. It doesn’t matter. The point is, it’s Optimus’s life or his, so if I travelled back in time to make sure it wasn’t _his_ , what do you think would happen?” 

“ _Fine_. Under duress, I hypothesize that _assuming_ you were able to travel back in time and _assuming_ you were able to disrupt the time flow by successfully killing Optimus Prime, a paradox would come into existence and then resolve itself by the easiest possible method, your current self would cease to exist, and your _new_ self would have no idea what you’d done—nor would anyone else. Are you happy?” 

_Are you happy._

No, Brainstorm supposed he’d never be happy now. Not _this_ version of him, anyway. Maybe the _other_ Brainstorm, the one who lived in the brave new world he was about to remake with his own hands…maybe that Brainstorm would be happy, someday. Or maybe he’d watch Quark become _conjunx endura_ with someone else and spend the rest of his life wishing it could have been him. 

Brainstorm didn’t care. 

He’d still say it was worth it. 

“Thanks,” he said, and shoved the door open, letting Perceptor get back to his experiment. “Sincerely.” 

“You’d be missed,” said a quiet voice behind him. 

Brainstorm hesitated, looking back over his shoulder. 

“Assuming anyone possessed the capacity to remember what you’d done. Which they wouldn’t. The paradox alone could…” 

The door closed, drowning out Perceptor’s final words. 

Assuming Brainstorm had heard correctly. Assuming that voice hadn’t just been his sense of survival, telling him whatever it needed to in order to divert him from his almost certainly self-sacrificial course. Or perhaps it had been the voice of reason, which Brainstorm did his level best to ignore—if he listened to _that_ voice, he’d never have invented anything. It might even have been one of those conscience things, which most other people seemed to possess in at least a small quantity. 

If Brainstorm had anything approaching a conscience, it was his love for Quark. 

Which was why he couldn’t afford to be diverted from his master plan. Not after all this work and all this time. 

It wasn’t Optimus Prime he was planning to kill. 

And his only regret would be that he’d never see the look on Perceptor’s face when Perceptor found out what he’d managed to pull off. 


	14. A Day in the Life:  Tarn

A Day in the Life of the DJD: Tarn 

Tarn saw no reason to change his daily routine just because the _Peaceful Tyranny_ was parked in a corner of the Warworld’s hangar instead of flying through space under its own power. 

After his weekly recharge, he liked to get up, change shape a few dozen times, and perform his daily devotions in the Imperial Chamber. Then he’d have a long soak in the oil bath, followed by a bracing shower in his wash rack and a fresh coat of polish courtesy of his automatic detailing system. Finally, he’d sip a cube of warmed energon while he assembled his daily schedule. 

He was halfway to the Imperial Chamber when he remembered that his daily routine had recently changed. 

Mental note: add _make Helex and Tesarus empty the Imperial Chamber_ to his schedule. 

He couldn’t bear to keep those statues any more. Megatron the Visionary and Megatron the Emperor; the past and the future; twin monuments to the glory of the Decepticons—until Megatron had betrayed the Cause. Now those statues were nothing but an embarrassment. 

Tarn thought of all the mornings he’d knelt before them, studying Megatron’s writings, and felt a sharp pang in his spark. He _missed_ doing that. Megatron’s behaviours had tainted an activity that Tarn had previously looked forward to each morning. It _hurt_. 

Tarn about-faced, heading back to his quarters. These days he’d been studying the works of _other_ Decepticon writers. He’d read Thunderwing, and Banzai-Tron, and Trannis before, but never with the attentiveness and thoughtfulness that he’d reserved for Megatron’s writings. He admitted with some embarrassment that he’d done very little reading among the publications of lower-ranking Decepticons. 

It was time for him to open his mind and expand his definition of what the Decepticons were, and what the Decepticons could be. Tarn needed to build a philosophical construct of his own: a vision of the Cause without Megatron. 

* 

So. The first thing on Tarn’s daily schedule was _personnel evaluations_. Not for his DJD – they were all up to date on their performance reviews. For his _new_ army. The Warworld crew. 

And, of course, Deathsaurus was late for his. 

Tarn really had to have a strict talk with his new field marshal about expectations and punctuality, but in the meantime, he supposed he could busy himself with reviewing the Warworld’s records. 

Tarn had all of Banzai-Tron’s notes on the Warworld crew, but they were woefully out of date. Two million years, or more. Tarn had spent his workday yesterday figuring out just _who_ was on Deathsaurus’s crew right now, in the present moment. He was disturbed by fifty-two names that he couldn’t find in the Empire’s databanks. The files provided him with some insights. 

Camiens. Eukarians. Rogue Autobots. Neutrals, Cybertronians who’d left during the Exodus. Terradores. Lithonians. Tarn had even heard a rumour that some of Deathsaurus’s crew weren’t mechanicals at all, but aliens in mecha suits, wearing armour to fit in. He shuddered at the very thought. He’d yet to _confirm_ any such crew members, but he kept bracing himself for such discoveries in the files. 

Tarn supposed he ought to be grateful that Deathsaurus had even bothered keeping files on his own people. Deathsaurus was really not one for _rules_. 

Two terrified Warworld soldiers had shown Tarn to a room filled with haphazard crates piled crookedly atop one another. These, they said, were the personnel files. Not neatly lined up in the drawers of locked filing cabinets, as Decepticon protocol demanded, but tossed into crates labelled with letters of the alphabet. 

Tarn looked into the nearest box: K. 

Killbison. Kakuryu. Krok (with STRUCK OFF STRENGTH in big red letters scrawled across the pad). 

Tarn winced and tried another box. D. 

Deathcobra. Despoiler. 

Tarn did a double take. 

No. Not Damus. Not his own name. Demus. Demus with an E. 

This file was also marked STRUCK OFF STRENGTH. 

Curiously, Tarn picked up the pad, turned it on, used the access key that the two soldiers had provided him with to crack the encryption, and skimmed the contents. 

It started decently enough, with an older version of the approved personnel evaluation form (PEF), each box filled out per regulations… 

…and then it got weird. 

Dates given with the chord and cycle reversed. Notes written in point form instead of proper sentences. The use of “slaghead” as a descriptor. Copious amounts of expletives. 

Tarn may have, occasionally, described someone as a slaghead in his rough drafts, but he always made sure to go back and explain _why_ the individual was a slaghead in appropriately professional terms. And he always, _always_ edited out the swearing. 

Tarn read the final “paragraph”, such as it was, more closely. 

· Requested discharge after conclusion of war – opened scrap metal business 

· Medical factors – extreme alt mode dysphoria now manifesting as phobia of _others_ changing shape, attempts to control freedom of others 

· Performed ok during war (disciplinary infractions 8.3, 8.4, 12) 

· Don’t want this slaghead on my warworld ref: Esmeral, Lyzack 

· Demus granted honourable discharge & TTFO 

· If he crosses ANY of my crew in future, death warrant pre-emptively granted 

Death warrant. And what was TTFO? Tarn skimmed backwards, trying to figure out what Demus had done. Honourable discharge and adequate performance – Deathsaurus’s objection wasn’t to Demus’s conduct as a soldier. Something personal, then. 

Monoformer prejudice? From _Deathsaurus_ , who seemed to adopt anyone and anything? That didn’t add up. Something else… 

There it was. A host of expletives in a paragraph about…oh. Oh, dear. Domestication. Deathsaurus really didn’t like that, did he? 

Tarn vowed in that instant to never, ever let Deathsaurus know the truth about the DJD’s Pet. 

The door slammed open. There was Tarn’s tardy field marshal, leaning on the doorframe, covered all over in soot and grease, with a bloody gash on his left cheek and the spines on his headdress sagging as though they’d been half-melted. As though he’d gotten his head stuffed into Helex’s smelter. 

Tarn wondered if Helex _had_ tried to stuff Deathsaurus into his smelter, but the rogue warlord looked far more tired than angry. 

“And where have you been?” Tarn asked archly. 

“Sorry I’m late. We had a critical cascade reaction in the star drive core last night.” 

Said nonchalantly. But Tarn’s fuel tank chilled. 

“ _Cascade_ …and you didn’t hit the evacuation alarms?” 

Deathsaurus shrugged. “Nobody could’ve gotten far enough fast enough. Had to stop the cascade or we’d’ve all died.” 

Tarn really didn’t like the lack of emotional reaction in Deathsaurus’s expression. _He_ , for one, was grateful for his mask, which concealed his utter panic at the idea of being vaporized in his recharge cycle. 

There was only one reason for Deathsaurus to act as though the almost-catastrophe was no big deal. “Does this happen _often_.” 

“Well, it didn’t before,” said Deathsaurus, limping into the room, “but our current repair job is a patch at best. We need a new star drive crystal. Can’t keep hammering power out of the old one without risking a recurrence.” 

“I must say your warworld is in _atrocious_ condition. Don’t you look after your equipment?” 

Deathsaurus actually dared to glare at him as he settled down in a chair. “As best I can with no support from Cybertron, no money I don’t earn, no supplies I don’t personally acquire, and no crew I don’t train myself.” He flashed Tarn a smirk. “And if you honestly thought this Warworld was in immaculate fighting trim then I’m going to go congratulate my counterintelligence unit for doing their job.” 

So. Deathsaurus wasn’t a good liar, but his disinformation team certainly was. “Yes. Tell your crew that we were fooled, and then divert us to Ritaxa for a retrofit,” Tarn said, unable to keep the tension from his voice. He didn’t want to be laid up in dockyard for months, perhaps years, but they couldn’t chase Megatron with a malfunctioning star drive. Tarn supposed he might need the time to whip the Warworld crew into shape, anyways. 

“We’re diverting to the Galactic Council outpost in the Van Whitbourne quadrant.” 

“Wh…” Tarn wasn’t used to being told what to do by anyone whose name wasn’t Megatron. “You just said we’re not combat worthy.” 

“And we need _shanix_ to do a retrofit,” Deathsaurus retorted. “We hit the Van Whitbourne garrison and a couple of the outposts strung out along the Spiral Arm, we take our spoils to Troja Minor and fence it for cash, and maybe we can afford a new star drive.” 

“Assuming the old star drive doesn’t melt down entirely in the meantime!” Tarn was incredulous. Deathsaurus _lived_ like this? 

“Well, what do _you_ suggest?” Deathsaurus snapped back, in a tone that nobody except Starscream had ever dared use to the commander of the DJD. 

Wordlessly, Tarn reached into his subspace and brought out his Gold Card—the one that Megatron had issued to the DJD to cover their operational expenses. 

Deathsaurus’s optics—all four of them—grew comically large. It was as though Deathsaurus had never seen that much money in his life. 

Perhaps he hadn’t. 

Deathsaurus looked up hopefully at Tarn. He suddenly looked young. Painfully so. Like a MTO right off the assembly line. 

Like a newly built MTO being handed his first weapon, delighted by his first-ever gift, immediately terrified of what he would have to use it for. 

And like that hypothetical young MTO, Tarn recognized the exact moment when Deathsaurus thought about Tarn’s motivations. He didn’t just put up a wall. Tarn saw an entire defensive fortification spring up behind Deathsaurus’s gaze. 

“What’s the catch?” 

Tarn sighed. “We’re supposed to be allies, aren’t we?” 

Deathsaurus watched him silently. 

“I can’t ask you to help me take down Megatron if your Warworld doesn’t work, can I?” 

“That’s it? You’re helping me fix my home so we can hunt Megatron?” 

“Or perhaps I don’t want to think about being vaporized in my sleep _ever again_.” 

Finally, Deathsaurus smiled. “Heh. All right.” He took the gold card from Tarn’s hand. 

“Order your bridge crew to lay in a course for Ritaxa and then we can get down to business.” He glanced at Demus’s file and curiosity got the better of him. “But…just for my own personal knowledge…what does “TTFO” signify?” 

“Oh.” Deathsaurus’s smile turned into a crooked smirk. “Told To Frag Off.” 

Right. Tarn had a _lot_ of work ahead of him to turn Deathsaurus into a respectable officer. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters notes: my fic "Mirror Images" suggests why Deathsaurus is so pissed off at Demus, long before the Roboids.


	15. Swearth:  Getaway

Swearth: Getaway 

“This mission is a waste of time,” Atomizer grumbled. 

“Worse. This mission is completely _preposterous_.” Getaway raised his hand and flagged down the bartender to order a round of drinks. “Optimus Prime doesn’t spend his time projecting a holoavatar onto a simulacrum of Earth populated by sitcom tropes and television clichés, does he?” 

This nonsense was going to change when he was in charge. The _Lost Light_ was going to concentrate on its mandate—finding the Knights of Cybertron. No more rescue missions, no more diversions, no more wacky hijinks. 

“So why are _we_ here?” Atomizer asked. “It’s nothing against Swerve. I don’t wish him ill or anything. But it doesn’t make sense for us to take risks to help him when we already know he’s on the List of Departures.” 

Getaway found himself distracted by Atomizer’s holoavatar. It wore a red and orange designer dress with a slit up the thigh, and Getaway was _sure_ he’d seen a small pistol clipped to a garter on Atomizer’s upper leg. “You look like Angelina Jolie,” he muttered, hating himself for knowing this useless fact. He blamed Skids. “In one of those spy movies.” 

He should probably blame Bluestreak – who was, after all, the _Lost Light_ ’s entertainment director – but Bluestreak wasn’t on the List of Departures, and Getaway was going to need all the help he could get putting emotional distance between himself and Skids. 

Atomizer retorted, “ _You_ look like that guy from “Flight of the Conchords.” 

Getaway sighed. He supposed he deserved that. “Anyway. We’re here because everyone else on the _Lost Light_ volunteered for this stupid mission. We’d look suspicious if we were the only two mechs to opt out. This is not the time for us to be drawing attention to ourselves.” 

“I had better not get spark feedback from this,” Atomizer grumbled. 

Getaway wasn’t happy about the situation, either. Tailgate had taken off with Cyclonus before Getaway could intervene. 

His relationship with Tailgate was at a delicate phase. Tailgate was warming up to him, but it was still too soon for Getaway to start insinuating that Cyclonus was a problem. Too early to ask Tailgate to stay away from Cyclonus. He needed to isolate Tailgate, to get Tailgate listening to him and only to him…but they weren’t there yet. 

Getaway supposed he should look on the bright side. Skids was with Tailgate and Cyclonus. That meant that Getaway was free to engage in activities he couldn’t let Skids know about. And hopefully Skids, and Bluestreak and what’s his name, would drag Cyclonus and Tailgate into shenanigans, distracting them from any deep, soul searching conversations. 

“Let’s put this time to some practical use,” Getaway suggested. “Find some as-yet-unsorted crew mates and ask them the important questions.” 

“Like who?” Atomizer asked. “How can you tell crew holoavatars from the fake humans who populate this nonsensical planet?” 

“Like him.” Getaway pointed to the door of the bar, where a young man with mahogany coloured skin and long black hair drawn back in a spiky ponytail clutched a surfboard and gawked around in obvious confusion. He wore a hideous aloha shirt in shades of turquoise and purple. A traditional Polynesian tattoo adorned his bicep. 

Shark teeth. 

“He’s definitely one of ours.” Getaway raised his hand and waved to get the newcomer’s attention. “Hey, Riptide,” he beckoned. “Why don’t you come over here and join us? I’d like to ask you something.” 

  



	16. Necroworld:  Velocity

Necroworld: Velocity 

Velocity fidgeted on the uncomfortable bench in the shuttle. She leaned over to Nautica, who sat beside her. “And it’s really okay for me to come planetside?” 

Nautica tilted her head. “Why wouldn’t it be?” 

“The captain said this trip was for, um, how did he put it? “Necrobot fans only.” And, I mean, we all know you’re into transgressive folklore, but I don’t know if I exactly count as a “Necrobot fan.” 

Nautica smiled. “Lottie, you need to be more sure of yourself.” She wrapped an arm around Velocity’s shoulders and gestured to the other crew members in the shuttle. “Do you think Swerve counts as a Necrobot fan?” 

Her tone suggested that this statement was highly dubious, but Velocity wasn’t so sure. “Swerve is very religious, Nauts. It’s easy to miss because he doesn’t make a big loud show of it. Swerve has everything to say about stuff that isn’t important and very little to say about the things that truly matter to him.” 

Nautica looked befuddled. 

Velocity had to remind herself that Nautica wasn’t all that good at picking up on non-verbal cues. Nautica relied on words to make sense of the world around her. If someone tried to communicate their feelings by expressions or gestures or body language, Nautica was liable to misinterpret it, if she even noticed it at all. 

Being friends with Nautica meant a certain willingness to overlook her awkwardness, and enough trust to be able to tell her, plainly, with words, when she crossed boundaries without noticing. Velocity was willing to do the extra work for two reasons. 

Firstly, Nautica didn’t act maliciously; it was ignorance, not disregard for other’s feelings, that caused her to push boundaries. She always stopped immediately whenever anyone communicated discomfort in a language that she could understand. 

And secondly, because not a lot of people had supported Velocity when she applied for medical school, and even fewer after she’d failed the first couple times. Everyone else kept telling her to go back to her previous vocation as a musician. Well, Velocity didn’t _want_ to be a musician any more. She didn’t care if she made more money that way. She wanted to be a doctor, and nothing was going to change her mind. 

Except. 

Except, when you flunk the test for the ninth time, there’s inevitably a long, dark night when you sit alone in your room and wonder if maybe the Universe isn’t trying to tell you something, if maybe you’re just not cut out for the dream you’ve dreamed all your life, if maybe it isn’t time to face facts and go back to the orchestra and say that everyone else had been right, and you were sorry, and could you please have your old job back. 

Velocity had not sat there long before Nautica had arrived, and Nautica had made her make a promise: one more try before she packed it in. 

And now she was a medic. Had done her first surgery, even! She’d taken the bullet out of Swerve’s arm and patched him up and now he was fully recovered. 

It was thanks to Nautica’s encouragement. 

So Velocity didn’t mind Nautica’s arm around her shoulders. It was a bit overly intimate—the sort of gesture usually reserved for amica endura—but Nautica’s fuel pump was in the right place. 

“How about Tailgate, then?” Nautica suggested. 

Velocity rubbed her chin. “I have to admit, I don’t know why Tailgate is on this trip.” 

“Tailgate is on this trip because he’s obsessed with new experiences. He spent millions of years stuck in a hole, and then he almost died. It’s no wonder he wants to live a little.” Nautica poked Velocity in the side. “And so should you.” 

Velocity took a deep breath. “You know I didn’t join the _Vis Vitalis_ to see the universe. I joined to get away from Caminus. And I joined the _Lost Light_ to get even farther away from everyone who knew me as a failure.” 

Nautica didn’t count. Nautica had never treated her like a failure. 

Nautica beamed. “Then consider this. I want to investigate some transgressive folklore. And I’d like it if you came with me.” 

Velocity realized, with some surprise, that she wasn’t in this shuttle out of a sense of obligation. She wasn’t here to pay Nautica back for believing in her. She was here because she actually wanted to spend some time in Nautica’s company—awkward, misfit, outspoken, Naughty Nautica. 

“I’m happy to,” Velocity said. 


	17. Scavengers Revisited:  Misfire

Scavengers Revisited: Misfire 

Misfire didn’t want to be a _jerk_ —well, any more of a jerk than he already was; people kept telling him that he came off as self-absorbed and impulsive, even though he didn’t mean to be—but someone really _had_ to do something about Krok, and it looked as though it was going to have to be him. 

Because really, they weren’t doing Krok any favours by playing along with his delusions, now were they? 

Fulcrum said it was harmless to let Krok keep clicking his “communicator.” If believing that his old squad were alive got him through another day, why was that so wrong? 

_Because it wasn’t true_ , Misfire argued. 

To which Crankcase had responded, “Who cares? What does his old squad being dead or alive have to do with our lives right now? Krok’s nuts, and he’s always been nuts, and he always _will be_ nuts, and that’s just our _normal_.” 

Fulcrum had taken that comment as support for his position. Misfire hadn’t bothered trying to convince Spinister to back his point of view. Spinister had been busy testing their newest equipment “to see what side it was on,” and Misfire hadn’t wanted to waste his evening watching Spinister search for the two clicks so vital to the formation of a clue. Not when he’d just thought of _hilarious_ edits to the DJD’s entries on Autopedia. He was going to say that Tesarus had been a trash compactor prior to joining the DJD, and Vos had been a starter pistol used to signal the beginning of the Ibex Cup, and Tarn’s pre-war claim to fame was singing the Valvoline lube jingle. That was a far more valuable use of his time. 

Flywheels would have wanted him to do it. 

So Misfire had let the communicator debate go, and now he was regretting that choice. Now, when they were being hunted by one of the most sadistic Autobots of all time. 

Since when had Ultra Magnus resigned as Duly Appointed Enforcer of the Tyrest Accord? Primus, but Misfire had never thought he would have been _glad_ to be hunted down by Ultra Magnus. At the moment, Misfire would rather be hunted down by an _army_ of Ultra Magnuses. That _had_ to be better than Fortress Maximus, the Warden of Garrus-9. 

“I thought he was dead,” Fulcrum whispered. 

“Death just made him a little meaner and a little crankier,” Misfire whispered back. 

“Come on, guys.” Krok pressed the object in his hand over and over again. Click-click-clickety-clickety-clickety… “Pick up!” 

Crankcase and Spinister were hiding somewhere else. Misfire resigned himself to the fact that he was probably going to die without ever being able to point out to Crankcase that _this_ , this was the reason why it mattered to _their lives now_ if Krok’s squad was alive or dead. Because Krok was clearly counting on his old crewmates to roll up and help them fight off Fort Max, and that wasn’t going to happen when they were all rusting in their graves on some half-cyberformed mudball. And if Krok didn’t have a better battle plan than waiting for an extraction that would never come, then the Scavengers would soon find themselves as just five more pieces of scrap in Demus’s scrapyard. 

“We survived the DJD,” Fulcrum said, his voice even, but his optics bright with barely-restrained panic. “Surely we’ll survive this.” 

“We survived the DJD because _Krok was on his game_ ,” Misfire hissed. “So don’t call me a jerk when I…” 

Krok’s battle plan had revived Grimlock and held the DJD at bay long enough to…well, long enough for Fulcrum to jump, except that hadn’t worked. The DJD had left because they’d gotten some signal. A more interesting prey, no doubt. They’d left, vowing to be back. 

Misfire had heard that the DJD liked to torment their victims by stalking them slowly, which meant that the Scavengers might _still be in the process of being murdered by the DJD_. Misfire certainly had nightmares about it often enough. 

Regardless, Krok’s plan had kept the DJD at bay long enough for them to get that signal, and only one of their number had died instead of all seven, and Misfire would rather not be killed by Fort Max _or_ the DJD, now or ever, and if they wanted to survive, they needed their strategist to do his job. 

“Decepticons!” Fort Max bellowed. “I’m coming for you!” 

Galactic rumours said that the Decepticons were the unhinged psychos of Cybertron. Misfire had no idea where that myth had started. Not with bloodthirsty maniacs like Fort Max roving around, waiting to shoot first and ask questions later. 

Clickety-clickety-click-click-clickety-click… 

Misfire snapped. 

Lies weren’t doing the Scavengers any favours, and they weren’t doing _Krok_ any favours, and before they all died Misfire was going to get Krok to come to terms with the truth, and maybe if he did, maybe they wouldn’t all have to die after all. If that was being a jerk, then so be it. 

“Give me that,” Misfire said, and jumped for the object in Krok’s hands. 


	18. Getaway's Machinations: Ravage

Getaway’s Machinations: Ravage 

It was irritating how often Ravage got accused of _hiding_. Also _skulking, lurking_ and _prowling_. Most of these fools on the _Lost Light_ couldn’t tell the difference between nefarious business and Ravage just going about his everyday life. 

Admittedly, the lines were somewhat blurred. 

Ravage didn’t particularly care for Swerve’s place, but Megatron wasn’t welcome there, so Ravage frequented it, listening to things that Megatron could not hear, seeing things that Megatron would not see. Ravage sat on a barstool in plain sight and listened in to the conversations around him. 

He listened in at Visages, too, but he also went down to Mirage’s bar just to get a drink from time to time. Mirage accorded him a certain amount of professional respect, and surprisingly, the feeling was mutual. Ravage himself did not know if his rapport with Mirage was a genuine friendship or an attempt to gain intelligence on Autobot Spec Ops or, most likely, a little bit of both. Ravage suspected this description was also mutual. Such was the life of an intelligence operative, even after the war was over. 

Everything was complicated now that the war was over. 

Soundwave had sent him aboard the _Lost Light_ to see if Megatron’s conversion had been sincere. Or was he plotting his next move in the war? Or had the Autobots shadowplayed him? Ravage wished he understood what Megatron was doing. By now, he knew it was not shadowplay. He had also been forced to come to terms with the fact that Megatron considered the war to be over. 

_You should kill him. Put him out of his misery._

But Ravage hesitated. 

He could argue that he did not possess the capacity to terminate Megatron himself. 

He could argue that he was still figuring out how to set up Megatron’s death. 

He could argue that he should not kill Megatron while Megatron himself was still undecided. It was clear to Ravage that Megatron himself was confused. Perhaps even lost. It was the role of a friend to help, not to kill. 

But there was the truth of the matter: Ravage was not just Megatron’s soldier, but Megatron’s personal friend. In the top circle of the Decepticon Empire the lines between rank and friendship grew blurred. Most of them had no kin beyond one another. 

And Ravage was not ready to kill his friend. 

He sat in the shadows at Mirage’s, drinking and thinking on these matters, wondering if he was doing the right thing by letting Megatron live. It was not in his nature to be so…forgiving. 

It would not be in the DJD’s nature, either. 

Had Megatron even considered…? 

That thought was only beginning to coalesce when one of the Autobots at the bar activated a device and set a painfully bright pulse into Ravage’s optics. 

“Ravage!” Tailgate exclaimed, in that _you’ve been skulking_ tone of voice. 

_These fools again_ . Ravage wondered why he bothered justifying his presence to the likes of Getaway and Tailgate. Regardless, the two Autobots decided to leave Visages. 

Ravage knew those two had been spending a significant amount of time together lately. There were rumours around the ship that Cyclonus was not very happy about it. Ravage knew these things because he listened to all the conversations around him, but he did not care about the romantic entanglements of Autobots, nor of Cyclonus, who had told him repeatedly, to his face, that he was, quote, “not a Decepticon.” As if mere words could make one be, or not be, a Decepticon. Cyclonus was not a Decepticon because the Decepticons did not claim him. Just as Deadlock would always be a Decepticon, betrayal or no. 

There was some thought there….some idea that had been brewing in Ravage’s mind…but now, he had forgotten it. 

Ravage shrugged, finished up his drink, and headed to Megatron’s hab suite. It was almost time for his weekly recharge, and while he rested, Ravage lay in the shadows beneath his berth and stood watch. The war may be over, but this was still a ship full of Autobots, and Ravage did not trust them. 

_You were sent here to evaluate Megatron and, if need be, to kill him. Now you’re going to guard him. There’s some irony in that._

On the other hand, perhaps mere orders could not make Megatron be, or not be, Ravage’s enemy. Megatron’s message in hand during the evacuation of the _Lost Light_ had proven that Megatron still claimed Ravage as a friend. Ravage could do no less in return. 


	19. An Orphan at the Door:  Swerve

An Orphan at the Door: Swerve 

Fooling around with Brainstorm’s metafictional bomb had been a big mistake. Swerve recognized that now. 

He’d thought that his recent experience on “Swearth” had been the last of it. He’d stopped feeling like a fictional character in someone else’s narrative when he’d seen how much he’d meant to his fellow shipmates. They’d deactivated their holoavatars and been done with alternate universe fictions. 

Or so Swerve had thought. 

Right now, though, Swerve was getting a terrible feeling that the effects of the metafictional bomb were very much still with him. 

Because he was pretty sure—no, make that almost certain—he was completely convinced that he, as well as the rest of the crew of the _Lost Light_ , were characters in a holiday special, and he was the only one who knew it. 

For example, there was no good reason for the fact that the cloaking device had to be green, or conical, or festooned with lights. 

The brain shields could have been shaped like helmets, or tiaras, or the Galactic Council’s stupid hats, but no, they were shaped like the paper crowns from Christmas crackers. 

The Biometric Envelopment Devices could have been named Lifesign Avoidance Machinery, and the crew could have all gone on the LAM, but no, instead they were nestled all snug in their BEDs. 

Skids tried to explain this to Nautica, but she said he was overcharged. Which, admittedly, he was. But so was she! And she would have seen it too if she’d watched as many holiday specials as Swerve had. 

He’d had them playing in the bar for a solid week, but Nautica had barely lasted three hours before she complained that the music was giving her a headache. Brainstorm, on the other hand, had gleefully rushed off to weaponize it. 

And now they’d found a baby on their doorstep. 

Swerve knew exactly what was going to come next. _Someone_ was going to learn a heartwarming lesson about the importance of family and the true meaning of Christmas. 

It was almost a shame that he had to go to BED and miss the ending. 

* 

“Yeah,” Brainstorm said, “sorry about that. I guess the contrivance engine leaked a little. I’ve got it shielded now, so we shouldn’t have any repeat incidents.” 

“What?” Swerve demanded. “You mean last night’s weirdness _wasn’t_ a holdover effect from the metafictional bomb?” 

“Nah. I’m pretty sure it was the contrivance engine.” Brainstorm paused. “You look disappointed.” 

“Yeah.” Swerve kicked at the floor. “Because if we _were_ all characters in a holiday special, then last night Megatron would’ve been visited by three spirits, and today he’d be completely changed. Actually nice, and hosting a big fancy dinner, and opening the Decepticon coffers to give us all a pay raise. And then he’d let us do whatever we wanted.” 

“Wait, _what_?” 

It was really uncanny to see _Brainstorm_ , of all people, looking utterly befuddled. 

“It’s from this story, and…” 

Swerve sighed. He was never going to be able to explain why Orion Pax, Trailcutter, and Tarn would’ve made the perfect Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet To Come. 

“Never mind.” 

But something nagged at his thoughts. 

_Ebenezer Scrooge and the death he’d earned._

_Let me sponge away the writing on this stone… Assure me that I may yet change these shadows you have shown me…_

_Megatron and Tarn._

It gave Swerve a funny feeling about the future. 

Swerve took a deep breath, reminded himself that he and all his crewmates were _not_ , in fact, fictional characters in someone else’s narrative, and set himself to thinking up a new drink to serve in his bar, in honour of this occasion. 

Perhaps he’d call it _Holiday Cheer_. 


	20. Mutiny!: Atomizer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's for Decepticonsensual with thanks for the idea that it was Thunderclash who finally broke Skids out of Grindcore.

Mutiny!: Atomizer 

Atomizer stared at the message he’d downloaded. Getaway had deleted the original, but Atomizer had set up this little device in his private hab suite, recording every transmission the _Lost Light_ sent and received. Spec Ops had taught him this little habit. He’d used it to track his targets during his time as an assassin. Occasionally he’d sent the juicier messages to Prowl for intelligence…or for blackmail. 

Now he wondered if he really wanted to play the message after all. 

He’d really thought that he and Getaway had pulled it off. 

For the past three weeks, the _Lost Light_ had been right on track, following the map carved into Rodimus’s desktop. No more pointless diversions. No more ridiculous shenanigans. No more stupid in-jokes that only a handful of people found amusing. And best of all, no more Megatron. 

Poor Hoist was overworked, alone in the med bay, with only a nursing certification instead of an actual doctor’s degree, but overall, Atomizer figured they were doing pretty well. 

It was hard to believe that just over three weeks ago he’d been slouching in the corner of his cell in the brig, certain that all his hard work had come to nothing. Cybertron needed the Knights to save it. To give its people hope. To lead them into the future. Just as much as Megatron needed to pay the price for his crimes. Atomizer believed this to the bottom of his spark, just as he’d believed that Rodimus, unguided, could never complete the mission. Atomizer had been willing to do whatever it took to make certain that Megatron saw justice. 

But despite all his hard work…despite his sacrifice…he’d failed. And if Rodimus had Chromedome inject Getaway—hell, if Megatron beat the truth out of Getaway (or him)—he might be inside a cell for a very long time. Assuming he didn’t get summarily executed by Megatron. 

He had nightmares of Rodimus holding Megatron in gun mode, and knowing that Megatron was a tank these days didn’t make them go away. 

Atomizer had been trying very hard not to think about that when who had shown up outside his cell but Powerflash…and Getaway. 

“Tried to shoot Ultra Magnus with a crossbow,” Getaway said, as though amused, but he opened the cell door anyway. 

Atomizer jumped to his feet, shocked, a little ashamed. “I thought…well, after they put your spark in that trembler cage I was sure we were done for. I didn’t figure I had anything left to lose by trying to bust you out.” 

“And he’s been cooling his heels in here ever since,” Powerflash said. 

Atomizer’s shame overwhelmed his surprise. 

“That’s understandable,” Getaway said smoothly. “Not everyone’s an escapologist.” He held the door wide and Atomizer, shaken, walked out. 

“What happened?” Atomizer asked. 

“The _crew_ happened,” Getaway said. “The hundred and seventy-some decent people who could be trusted to do the right thing. Megatron’s gone. Rodimus is gone. Their supporters are gone. And _we_ are ready to _complete our mission_.” 

At the time, Atomizer thought that the _decent people_ line had been for Powerflash’s benefit. 

Now he wondered if it had also been for his. 

* 

“There’s a lot of my life that I don’t remember,” Skids said on the transmission. “There’s probably people who deserve a kind word from me now, and I can’t recall them. I wanted to. So if that’s you—if you’re hoping I’ll speak to you, then I want you to know I did my best to remember, and I just…I just ran out of time.” The look in his optics was terrible to see. “If that’s you, I’d like to think that in time I’d have gotten enough memories back to say what you deserve to hear. I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave it to you to fill in the blanks, and understand that I’d say it myself if I could.” 

Atomizer had never been that close to Skids. Nobody had. Getaway had probably come the closest, through a considerable amount of work on his part. Getaway had said that Thunderclash had broken Skids out of Grindcore in a _physical_ sense, but Skids’s _spark_ remained trapped behind the notorious prison’s bars. The Skids that Atomizer remembered was distant and cold and utterly ruthless—the kind of person who had sold his soul a long time ago. 

Or had it taken from him. 

_This_ Skids—Atomizer had rather liked him, had even had a little fling with him, until Getaway had shown up. Atomizer hoped Getaway didn’t know. Skids was Getaway’s, as much as he could be anyone’s. 

“…Getaway,” said Skids on the transmission, jarring Atomizer out of his thoughts. “I thought long and hard about what to say to you. You know what? I’ve got nothing. I’ve got this for _everyone else_ on the _Lost Light_ : your new captain is the kind of person who sells out his crewmates to the _Decepticon Justice Division_.” 

Atomizer felt his spark run cold. 

“Let’s set Megatron aside,” Skids continued. “And let’s accept that you, listening to this, you think Megatron deserves to get murdered by the DJD. Okay, I won’t argue. How about Tailgate? What did he do to deserve Tarn’s attentions? Or Nautica? What crime did she commit? Or Swerve? Or Nightbeat? Or…pfft…or _Ultra Magnus_? You’ve got a captain who thinks it’s appropriate to send the _formerly duly appointed enforcer of the Tyrest Accord_ to his death at the hands of the Decepticon Justice Division.” 

Atomizer’s brain didn’t want to parse this information. He’d sent the coordinates for Necroworld to the _Galactic Council_. Where had the DJD come into it? 

“So,” Skids asked, “what happens when Getaway doesn’t like something _you’ve_ done? Or, hell, what happens when you do what Velocity did, and end up in the wrong place at the wrong time? You take your time and think about that and ask yourself if you really want someone like that for a captain. You take your time…the time that I don’t have any more. Because if I did I know what I would have done when I found out that someone with those ideas of _loyalty_ was calling himself my friend.” 

Atomizer’s fuel tank turned over. 

Getaway had _told Atomizer_ to call General Neech, and Atomizer had. Was it possible…could it be...that Getaway had also contacted the DJD? Because the alternate Brainstorm on the quantum duplicate _Lost Light_ had called the DJD about Overlord. He had possessed their contact information. Getaway might have gotten it there. Or, hells, perhaps their Brainstorm had the same information. 

The Galactic Council would have only taken Megatron. Well, possibly others would have died if they’d been foolish enough to protest. Atomizer wouldn’t have put it past them. Either way, though, the Galactic Council wouldn’t have hurt them if they didn’t choose to defend Megatron. That’s what Getaway had said. 

The DJD, on the other hand, would leave no survivors. 

“Someone once told me,” Skids said, “and I’m afraid I don’t remember his name…someone once told me he didn’t believe in heaven, but he was pretty sure hell existed. And I think…I think maybe he was right. So if the DJD leave any remains after they’re done with me…” He stared into the camera and his optics grew cold. This…this was the Skids that Atomizer remembered. “Drop them in a smelting pool and melt them down.” 

Atomizer was only half listening. Thunderclash had said something about Grindcore and smelting pools, but that didn’t seem very important next to the thought that Getaway might… 

_If I do something Getaway doesn’t like, what would he do to me?_

Call the DJD? Surely not. 

But Getaway had just told Atomizer to release Sunder and Froid from the brig, and now, Atomizer wasn’t so sure. 

Where did Getaway draw the line? 

On screen, Skids shook his head dismissively. “I don’t need a funeral. I don’t need a marker. Let me be a memory…and yes, I know how that sounds coming from me. Memories are fleeting. They can be altered. They can be taken. But if I live on in your memories, and if your memories are good ones, then that’s the closest thing to heaven that I can believe in, and that’s enough. This is Skids, saying goodbye.” 

There had to be another explanation. Maybe the DJD had picked up the signal the _Lost Light_ had sent. Maybe the DJD had an agent inside the Galactic Council. Hell, maybe the DJD had been tracking Megatron’s spark signature. There was one thing Atomizer knew for sure: there was no point asking Getaway how the DJD found out. He’d just act scandalized that Atomizer could even _think_ he’d tipped them off, and then he’d suggest one—or all—of those entirely plausible scenarios, right before guilt-tripping Atomizer for his lack of trust and then declaring the matter closed. 

But it would never be closed. Atomizer remembered what had happened when Whirl had outstayed his usefulness. 

Atomizer took a deep ventilation to steady his nerves and focused on doing his duty. That had always helped him to control his emotions before. 

He just had to do his job and he’d be okay. 

Briefly, Atomizer considered turning the nudge gun on his own head. 

Because he didn’t think he’d be able to look at Getaway quite the same way again. It would take all his skill to ensure that Getaway didn’t notice any changes in his behaviour. And he always was a better assassin than he was a spy. 


	21. DJD Final Confrontation:  Deathsaurus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to say, this chapter wasn’t easy for me to write. I wanted to write Deathsaurus and Overlord in a snarky fight.
> 
> But…
> 
> “On My Dark and Lonely Side” has a different ending to “The Dying of the Light” and WILL have Deathsaurus and Overlord in a snarky fight.
> 
> This is all I ever want to write of canon Deathsaurus at this point in his life. I gave myself a sad :(

Deathsaurus wasn’t wired like most other mechs. 

The behaviour of typical Cybertronians typically bewildered him. Leozack said he might not even experience the same emotional range as the average person. Deathsaurus learned that he could not rely on the assumption that other people would want what he wanted, would value what he valued. 

Most people, for example, worried greatly about what strangers would think of them. Deathsaurus cared not in the least. 

Many people had inexplicable sentimental attachments to objects and places. Deathsaurus had long ago learned that much in life was fleeting. The less he cared for, the less he had to lose. 

There was, of course, one exception: his crew. His crew was the _only_ thing that mattered. 

Which was why he had been willing to accept Tarn’s offer of alliance. 

It wasn’t as though Deathsaurus had forgotten the names of his troops who had been killed by the DJD. He knew those names very well indeed. He recited them every time he went into recharge. 

It was the fact that nothing he could do would bring them back. 

To _avenge_ them? Vengeance was one of those concepts that meant very little to Deathsaurus. The dead would never know they had been avenged. Was the vengeance to make Deathsaurus feel better, then? Would it be sweeter than an ordinary kill? Or would it taste bittersweet? 

No matter how heady the flavour of revenge might be, Deathsaurus had more pressing concerns. He had five hundred surviving crew who depended on him. What were his feelings next to their needs? The easiest and best way to keep them alive was to accept Tarn’s terms. 

But with conditions. Deathsaurus had tested Tarn, to make sure that Tarn was not the sort of person who would casually sacrifice his troops for matters of expediency. Tarn had passed that test when he’d refused to kill his DJD. 

To date, their alliance had been stable. Even satisfying. 

Now, Deathsaurus was starting to have second thoughts. 

Tarn and Deathsaurus and their troops had shot down Megatron’s shuttle and routed his Autobots. The targets had taken cover in the Necrobot’s home, activating a storm shield to serve as a fortification. Deathsaurus knew the shield wouldn’t hold against the weapons his crew carried, and he didn’t plan to give the Autobots time to reinforce their defenses. The Decepticons would punch through the shield and kill the defenders, quick and clean. He’d even made an exception to his usual pragmatism and ordered his crew to leave Megatron for Tarn. 

But Tarn had ordered a retreat. 

Deathsaurus had been furious. His crew kept asking him why they were here and what they were doing, and Deathsaurus didn’t have an answer. If they weren’t going to kill Megatron, they might as well leave, and if they _were_ , why not get on with it? 

Deathsaurus had gone to Tarn to demand an answer. 

Tarn insisted the delay was an act of torture. Torture was another one of those concepts that Deathsaurus found no meaning in. For some reason it mattered to Tarn that Megatron and his allies be frightened, demoralized, panicked, tormented…that the kill was no good, otherwise. Deathsaurus understood that Tarn needed this, but he didn’t understand why. To his mind, all prolonged terror ever did was taint the flavour of the kill. 

But the DJD did not need to kill to eat. They ate of their kills—Helex in the field, Tarn only from one of those crystal goblets of his—wholly from decadence rather than necessity. Deathsaurus doubted they’d ever known what it was to starve. 

Tarn had gone off somewhere, leaving Deathsaurus to calm his crew. Deathsaurus did not know how to explain what Tarn was thinking. He settled for reiterating that it was important, even if they did not understand why. Tarn knew what he was doing, Deathsaurus said. 

And then Tarn brought Overlord home. 

* 

“Megatron was undone when he began to feel instead of fight,” Tarn proclaimed. “That won’t happen to me—and I refuse to let it happen to anyone under my command.” 

Deathsaurus found an emotion pressing at the expressionless mask he’d pasted on his features the instant Tarn murdered Kaon. 

Deathsaurus didn’t even know if his disguise was at all convincing. He suspected his horror was obvious in his optics, even if he’d kept it off his face. But everyone was looking at Tarn and Overlord and the headless body on the floor. Nobody was paying attention to him right now. 

Which gave him precious seconds to fortify his composure. 

And that emotion battering at his fortifications from within… 

…that was _rage._

Truth be told, he wasn’t sure if he was angrier at Tarn or at Overlord. Tarn, who’d done the unspeakable and killed his own crewmate without cause. Overlord, who’d goaded Tarn into it. Tarn, who’d fallen for Overlord’s game. Overlord, who clearly found it amusing. 

Tarn’s words tipped the scale. 

_To “let it happen?” You_ knew _I left Cybertron rather than let my crew be thrown into slaughter at Megatron’s command. I’ve always been like this. You knew!  
And I’m not “under your command.” I’m your ally, not your soldier. _

Deathsaurus suspected Tarn did not see it that way. That the “alliance” had, in fact, been Deathsaurus and his crew getting wholesale drafted back into the war they’d once deserted. 

_But what else could I have done?_

Deathsaurus had been prepared to fight the DJD, but he’d known how many of his crew would die if he did. The alliance had offered a way that they all could survive. And Deathsaurus wasn’t a fool. He’d tested Tarn to see if he could be trusted. Back then, Tarn had passed. 

Overlord had tested Tarn, and this time Tarn had failed. 

Deathsaurus considered giving the order he would have given if Tarn had failed the first test. If Tarn had killed his DJD, Deathsaurus would have spoken the word and the Warworld crew would have fallen on him and torn him apart. Not without losses, of course, but at least there should have been a few survivors. 

Now…? 

Now Overlord was here. And there were still four other DJD members who’d jump to Tarn’s defense. 

No, Deathsaurus couldn’t give the order now. The odds were not in his favour. 

But his trust in Tarn’s judgment had been shaken. 

* 

“Final flailing,” Tarn said. 

Ordinarily Deathsaurus would have been inclined to trust Tarn’s judgment. Tarn must have seen countless _final flailings_ in his career. He ought to know if the Autobots’ unexpected fervor and combat prowess was the spike of adrenaloids in their system just before they crashed from exhaustion and despair, or whether there really was something amiss. 

But Tarn had let Overlord provoke him to an impulsive decision that had led to Kaon’s death. And Tarn had so much history with Megatron. He might well be emotionally compromised. 

So Deathsaurus asked his instincts what was happening, and his instincts screamed at him that these Autobots should not be capable of mounting this sort of resistance. They were too strong, too fast, too resilient. This was _wrong_ , and the smart thing to do would be to withdraw and observe and figure out what was happening so they could mount an effective counterattack. A counterattack with minimal risk to their own side. 

Deathsaurus was taken aback. It wasn’t like him to be so out of touch with his own instincts. 

He shook it off. He would have time to contemplate his own psyche later, when his troops were safe. 

And then Megatron took the field. 

The order to retreat was on Deathsaurus’s lips. 

Later, Deathsaurus would finally come to understand the meaning of _regret_. He regretted bowing to convention and showing Tarn some professional courtesy. He regretted telling Tarn he was going to give the withdrawal order instead of just _giving_ it. 

Because Tarn said no. 

As though Tarn had any authority over him. As though Tarn were his commander and not his ally. 

Rage flared in Deathsaurus’s spark, and he prepared to argue, but at what cost to his crew? To split the alliance now, in front of Megatron and the Autobots? With Overlord next to Tarn? What chance would his troops have with Megatron and the Autobots on one side and Tarn and Overlord on the other? 

Deathsaurus swallowed his misgivings. 

They tasted bitter. 

* 

He let Tarn and Overlord advance on Megatron without him. He’d never cared about Megatron. Had never wanted anything more than for Megatron to leave him and his crew alone. To let them forge their own lives, free of anyone else’s machinations. 

Tarn’s voice echoed over his comm, ordering him to advance on the fortress and kill the Autobots. After that he would be _free to go_. 

As though he were indentured. 

Deathsaurus almost told Tarn to go frag himself, and then he swore he felt Tarn’s entrapment like the weight of a chain tightening about his neck. 

There was nothing he could do. He swallowed hard and prepared to call the advance. 

Suddenly, a barrage of screams thundered in his audios. A list of names scrolled in front of his optics. New names to add to the litany of the fallen that he recited before recharge. New deaths under his command. 

Deathsaurus fell to his knees. 

This time, unlike every other time before…this time he could not blame Megatron or Shockwave or Darkmount or whoever else had ordered him to send his troops into the mouths of cannons. This time he could not say Tarn was to blame. This time when he told himself he’d done everything he could to keep his crew safe, he could not believe it. 

His fault. 

This time it was all his fault. 

So this was _guilt_. He had never felt it before. It was caustic and cauterizing, searing his spark from the inside out. It left him short of breath and crushed beneath its impossible weight. It left his talons sticky with the life fuel of his people. 

And then, a ray of hope, from a most unexpected quarter. 

“It’s not too late for us to do something,” Nickel said. 


	22. On Luna One:  Prowl

Meanwhile, on Luna-1: Prowl 

“You’re not one of _those_ , are you?” Sentinel Prime asked Cerebros. 

Prowl was injured, on the verge of unconsciousness, but his brain insisted on drinking in as much data as it could and analyzing that data, regardless of the state of his body. Prowl knew his mind would do so up to the bitter end. 

But his brain wasn’t working as well as it usually did. Instead of using this information to come up with a possible strategy – like infuriating Sentinel by insinuating he protested a little too much due to his own closeted desires – Prowl’s brain insisted on making a useless and entirely unwelcome connection to one of Prowl’s earlier memories. 

Before the war, Sentinel Prime had asked Prowl this question. 

Prowl and Sentinel had been on their way to the Senate building when they’d come across a pair of mechanisms sitting very close together on a park bench, holding hands. In their free hand they each clasped a small, glowing vial of innermost energon. It was obvious what was going on. That park must have been a special place to those two—perhaps where they first met, or a favourite spot for dates. Regardless, they’d chosen it as a place to finalize their vows to one another. 

They moved their heads close together, and Prowl couldn’t stop staring. 

He’d never thought he’d see a _conjunx ritus_ performed so publically. It was shocking, yet fascinating. If Prowl ever did that, he’d want to do so privately, where no prying eyes could observe. If Prowl ever did that…would it look like this? Would he and… 

His mind, usually so sharp, only belatedly processed what Sentinel had said to him. 

But once it got working, it was as cunning as ever. Immediately after he’d parsed the question, his analysis center informed him that he’d already taken too long to give an answer. Now Sentinel suspected him. 

Fortunately, his analysis center also provided him with a solution. 

“Disgusting,” Prowl breathed, thereby explaining his pause in replying. Sentinel would think that Prowl was so revolted by the sight that it had left him momentarily stunned. 

“Someday I’m going to do something about that,” Sentinel assured him. “Someday _soon_ such puerile displays will be punished by the full force of the law.” 

That was when Prowl understood two things. 

First, that his duty—his _moral_ duty—was to conspire to restrain his mentor’s worst impulses. Sentinel could be a powerful force for good, if only his focus was fixed on the real problems in society, like the Decepticon terrorist movement, and not on pointless diversions like persecution of monoformers, beastformers and conjunx endurae. Sentinel’s bigotry too easily distracted him from the true issues. 

Secondly, that while he’d learned many useful things from his mentor, Prowl would never be foolish enough to consider Sentinel Prime his _friend_. Sentinel would turn on him in an instant if he ever discovered that Prowl was, in fact, one of _those_. 


	23. The Functionist Universe:  Megatron

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for description of the DJD's deaths.

The Functionist Universe: Megatron 

Megatron marched through a Functionist hellscape with his hands in shackles and thought, for just a moment, that his war had been justified. 

In the universe he came from, this nightmare world had never come to pass. He had acted and in so doing had put this future to death. 

In his universe, he had sent Starscream to assassinate the Functionist Council. Starscream had been very diligent. Megatron realized that he should have given Starscream more credit—he really had done a good job. 

Then Megatron immediately felt guilty. 

That was his _old voice_ talking. The one that felt it was not merely his duty but his _right_ to shape the world in his image. The right of an Emperor—or a tyrant. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else could stand against him. Other’s rights, other’s lives—these were dust under his feet on the way to his glorious future. 

Peace through tyranny. 

Beautifully efficient. If everyone just listened to him and did as he bade them, lasting peace would be achieved. Anyone who refused to obey was simply removed as an obstacle. It was their own fault for failure to comply. 

Megatron realized now that he had not cared about _their_ rights. Somewhere along the way he had started to consider his judgment superior to everyone else’s. His plan, the only plan that could possibly work. His way, the only way. 

Everyone else had been collateral damage on his road to Cyberutopia. A road he now realized he had paved with corpses. Had he ever reached his end goal, his Cybertron would have been a necropolis. 

What if his position had been reversed with Starscream’s? Would he have been content to follow along with Starscream’s master plan for peace through tyranny? No, of course not. He could never have ceded complete control of his will, no matter how brilliant Starscream’s plan. Yet he had expected Starscream to do it for him. 

Had their positions been reversed, Megatron suspected he would have reneged long before Starscream did. 

Megatron took another look at the streets of Functionist Cybertron and realized that just because this alternate Cybertron was a hellish dystopia did not mean the world that he had tried to rule was any better. There were countless mechanisms who counted _his Cybertron_ as a hellish dystopia. The victims of his DJD, for example, or the people who’d been smelted down in Grindcore to make his Super MTOs. The cold-constructed Decepticons he’d built as fodder for his war. The people he’d personally torn apart for daring to disagree with him. The countless organics he’d sacrificed to grow his Empire, to spite Optimus, and in the end, because he could. 

No, there was no absolution for him here in the Functionist Universe. No proof that he’d been right all along. No matter how much a part of him wanted there to be. 

He gritted his teeth. 

Because he didn’t know what to _do_ other than hunt down the mechanisms who were responsible for these shackles on his wrists and to murder them all. Preferably slowly. The Functionist Council were monsters and bigots and the universe would be better off without them. 

Just like his DJD. Who he’d slaughtered. 

And he’d enjoyed it, because for the first time, the two voices in his head had been united. The new Megatron, who’d wanted to make amends, to improve the world, to protect others, to undo the wrongs he’d done. And the old Megatron, who loved the feeling of power that came from holding lives in his hands and the feeling of release that came from quenching his rage with blood. 

No, he dared not think he could ever unite his new self with his old. 

He had to purge his old self completely. He had to let his new self come up with a way to solve the Functionist problem that did not involve letting his former vices run riot. There had to be a non-violent solution. If he did not know it now, he would simply have to have faith that in time, he would be able to invent it. 

That he would rise to the challenge. 


	24. All Hail the Useless One:  Terminus

All Hail the Useless One: Terminus 

Terminus remembered nothing between being pulled to safety by the Necrobot and waking up in a life pod in the Necrobot’s fortress. 

Four million years was a preposterous amount of time. How many mechanisms had been created in that time? How many had died? Surely the world would have changed out of all proportion. 

Terminus had expected to feel disoriented. Lost, even. 

But Megatron was there. 

And Megatron had grown into the destiny that Terminus had once heard foreshadowed in his words. 

Terminus was content to live in the glorious future. He did not grieve the world he’d lost. It was as nothing to him. What had that world ever given him but hardship and hunger and a lean, sharp anger that cut like a double-edged knife? His co-workers, his friends…yes, he would miss them. But they lost people all the time in the mines. 

Terminus had learned from a very early age not to get attached. 

Strange how Megatron didn’t seem to see his own accomplishments. When he described the war to Terminus he spoke of lines crossed and sins committed, of wrath and atrocity and guilt. Terminus saw only revolution and retribution and a great levelling that had been many centuries in coming. He could not understand why Megatron acted complicit in his own criminal sentencing. Who were the Autobots to judge him? Why did Megatron accept their judgment? 

When they teleported—when they arrived back on Cybertron—Terminus saw a world that he’d barely glimpsed in his former life, and Megatron saw a nightmare. 

Terminus had needed Megatron to explain to him what was wrong. Megaron said that Cybertron should have been rebuilding. Rising from its ashes. _This_ Cybertron was overbuilt, restrained and carved up and plastered all over with neon propaganda. They’d crossed universes and ended up in a place where the Functionists’ reign had never ended. 

The Functionists had reigned when Terminus resigned himself to death in the mines. This was much the same as the world he’d always known. And he knew exactly what to do. 

Fight. 

Megatron, infuriatingly, did not want to fight. His strategy was brilliant, his courage undeniable, his strength inspirational…even when he refused to take up a gun. But Terminus saw the people of Adaptica rally to Megatron’s cry and knew that the seeds he had seen in the youth long ago had come to flower while he slept. 

_This_ was where Megatron belonged. Changing this Cybertron for the better. Not rotting in prison in a world where Autobots ruled. 

But Megatron would not see it. 

Megatron had failed to learn Terminus’s final lesson. Terminus had _told_ the young mech to leave him and save the writings when the mine began to collapse. Megatron had. But he’d learned nothing from it. 

He was still _attached_ to those Autobots. Had abdicated his responsibility to do what was necessary, in favour of doing what Ultra Magnus and Rodimus told him he _should_ be doing. 

Terminus would fix that. 

Terminus felt no guilt when he opened fire on the Cog shuttle, though he did feel a hint of unease when its occupants survived. They looked like an enemy, yes, but he’d ignored their transponder, hadn’t checked their spark signatures. He wasn’t sure if _the fog of war_ would be an adequate defense. 

But it was. 

It was, and when Roller contacted him with the location of the teleporter that would take them home, Terminus knew exactly what he needed to do. 

He took Megatron elsewhere. 

Terminus almost regretted his decision when he saw the despair on Megatron’s face. 

“Your friends gave you another chance,” he said gently. He needed only get Megatron through this, and then his young protégé would be able to show him firsthand what the past four million years had taught him about revolution and war. 

“They already did,” Megatron responded. 

But Megatron was a survivor. He’d pull through. 

Terminus hoped someday Megatron would overcome his greatest weakness. By now he really should know better than to let himself get so attached. 


	25. Troja Major:  Nautica & Agonizer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Help, I'm obsessed with yet another obscure Decepticon.

Shopping Trip on Troja Major: Nautica & Agonizer  
  


Nautica first met the mech who called himself the Curator on a galaxyweb message board devoted to Cybertronian mythology. She was thrilled to find someone who shared her interests in pre-Golden Age literature, transgressive folklore, symbology, and the mysteries of antiquity. Someone from her own species who knew Cybertron’s more recent history much better than she did, because he’d lived it. 

Now that Caminus was back in contact with Cybertron, Nautica had a lot of reading to do to catch herself up on millions of years’ worth of missing history. The Curator made some excellent recommendations, including an offer to trade a very rare edition of Towards Peace—a “second edition,” he called it, assuring her that “the text was identical to the first edition; the difference is merely in the presentation.” Nautica was more than happy to make the trade. Translating some Spectralist symbols for the Curator was more pleasure than obligation. 

“But what do I call you?” Nautica asked him. “The “Curator” isn’t really a name.” 

“Oh,” he said, and his image on her viewscreen sheepishly scratched the back of his head. “I prefer it, actually. My given name is…was…ah, “Agonizer,” you see.” 

Nautica had not yet become accustomed to Decepticon nomenclature. She remembered gaping at him. 

“It’s an MTO thing,” he explained. “From the war. It was culturally desirable for newly built Decepticons to use frightening names. It conferred status among one’s peers and, we hoped, would give our enemies pause. Hence you’d have young mechs walking around with names like Painmonger and Deathcobra and Torment. Even the ones who’d never been in an actual battle. For example, Painmonger was an administrative clerk on a Warworld.” 

Nautica had laughed. Social cachet through intimidating nomenclature; yes, she could see this. 

“But the war’s over now,” he assured her, “so “The Curator” is a much more accurate description of who I am now, and what I do.” 

Everything had been fine until the day that Hound and Bluestreak had caught her reading the _Mortinomicon_ in a corner booth at Swerve’s. Hound, grinning, had asked her where she’d managed to acquire the holy book of the Mortilus cult. It had been banned for three million years on Cybertron. 

_From the Curator_ , she’d said, and Bluestreak had asked who that was. 

“Maybe you know him as Agonizer?” 

Swerve’s bar fell silent. 

“Agonizer?” Swerve demanded. “ _The_ Agonizer?” 

“The Agonizer with the curio shop and the historical antiquities,” Nautica said, bewildered, knowing that it was possible for Cybertronians to end up with the same name. Newly built MTOs trying to sound impressive…there were probably a lot of Agonizers. 

“The one with the _heads_ ,” Bluestreak said. 

Trailcutter had looked up from his glass and squinted at Nautica. “Can’t be. Hers is still attached.” 

Hound snapped his fingers. “Yes, it is the same Agonizer. I remember reading an intelligence report saying that he was really into history and archaeology when he wasn’t going around at night cutting people’s heads off. The joke was that studying was what Agonizer did in the daytime.”  
Nautica didn’t want to believe it. The part of her that was willing to consider it wanted to protest that Ag…the _Curator_ didn’t decapitate people any _more_ now that the war was over. 

But as she looked around the room, she swallowed her objection. 

It seemed wrong not to defend her friend. 

But it would be more wrong to try to convince these people—these people who’d lived through the war she’d missed—that Agonizer was a good guy after all. 

* 

Nautica tried very hard not to think about the head thing, but when she found herself on Troja Major meeting the Curator face-to-face, she had a lot more difficulty willing herself to forget. 

Particularly when his gaze fell to the small Autobot badge at her throat. 

Nautica had adopted the Autobot symbol very quickly after arriving on Cybertron. She’d always had trouble fitting in; she’d hoped the badge would make fitting in a little easier. The people that she and Windblade were associating with were primarily Autobots. She’d at least look like she belonged. 

Now she felt a stab of—no, not regret. Fear. 

The Curator—Agonizer—lifted his gaze from her throat to her optics, and then he smiled sadly. “I know what you’re thinking.” 

Nautica wanted to deny it, but stammered so hard that she couldn’t articulate the lie. “I…I…” 

“It’s all right,” he assured her. “The war’s over. “Agonizer” is just another transgressive folk tale now.” 

She should be proud of him for walking away from that life and building this new one here on Troja Major. He was a successful antiquarian now, surrounded by the artifacts and lore that he loved. Yet part of her wondered if anyone could ever forgive someone who’d done the things that Agonizer was said to have done. If he should be allowed to set his past on a shelf and move on, when so many others would never be able to do the same. 

She thought of Megatron and wondered if she forgave too easily. 

Then she thought of Getaway, and his coup, and how Skids had died because of it. No. She would not regret giving people the opportunity to change their ways. To be better than they had been. 

Still, she could not entirely bring herself to trust the Curator’s advice. 


	26. Meanwhile, on the Lost Light:  First Aid

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to everyone who's left comments, kudos and reblogs...I'm not used to writing for prompts so this is a big new experience for me!

First Aid realized he didn’t trust his own judgment. 

“Do you like Getaway?” he asked Blades, as soon as he was done the repairs. 

Blades repeated the question twice, as if trying to figure out whether First Aid meant the word “like” in a literal sense or a romantic one. Deciding on literal, he answered a casual affirmative. “You?” 

First Aid paused before answering, realizing that he didn’t _want_ Getaway to be up to something nefarious. 

“I like him a lot. But I don’t know if I trust him.” 

First Aid didn’t know if the problem was real or only real inside his head. The Protectobots and Mirage certainly didn’t seem to see anything amiss with Getaway being captain. Or anything unusual about the idea that Rodimus and his little band had decided to ditch the rest of the crew. But the notion didn’t sit right with First Aid. His spinal strut kept prickling a warning. 

Or maybe Pharma had just made him paranoid. 

He’d liked Pharma, too. Look how _that_ had turned out. First Aid shouldn’t have needed Ratchet to show up at Delphi and figure out what was wrong. First Aid would have seen it too if only he could have looked beyond the pedestal he’d put Pharma on. He’d idolized his commanding officer so much that he failed to recognize that Pharma was all too flawed. He’d failed to understand the facts that were right there in front of his face. 

Now First Aid felt as though he’d gone to the other extreme. Seeing conspiracies everywhere. Unable to trust his superiors. 

_I’m turning into Red Alert_ . 

First Aid still had a hard time thinking of Getaway as his superior officer. He scratched his head, chasing the thought. He’d liked Pharma, yes, but as a role model and commander, not as a pal. Not as an equal. Perhaps _respect_ was a better word than _like_. 

Getaway, on the other hand, was _very_ likable. Getaway was an incorrigible flirt, just like Skids, but there was more to it than that. Skids and Getaway were both charmers—how were they different? Skids was fun to be around, but he treated First Aid just like he treated everyone else. Getaway, on the other hand… 

There was something about Getaway that just made First Aid feel _special._ The way Getaway trusted him with confidences. The quiet asides Getaway shared with him, like an in-joke just between the two of them. The way Getaway noticed, and appreciated, his hard work. The bomps. He was closer to Getaway than most people, with the possible exception of Skids and Tailgate. 

…right? 

Suddenly, First Aid didn’t know if he and Getaway were really so close after all. Getaway certainly had been evasive since First Aid’s return. And he definitely wasn’t treating First Aid the way he used to. First Aid now felt like an awkward troublemaker, a thorn in Getaway’s side, rather than a special confidante. 

_You’re the Chief Medical Officer. You shouldn’t need Getaway to feel special_ . 

Would he be feeling this conflicted if Ambulon were alive? Would he need a friend like Getaway so much if he still had a friend like Ambulon? 

And there, again, everything came back to Pharma. 

First Aid tried to clear his head. If he hadn’t been burned by Pharma…if he hadn’t been charmed by Getaway…what conclusion would the facts suggest? 

_What would Ratchet do_ ? 

Rodimus, Ultra Magnus, and many of their closest friends were missing. 

Hound—the third-in-command since Drift’s departure— _still_ just third-in-command, with Getaway the new captain and Atomizer his second. Were those two even fit for the ranks they held? Had they had any training? Any experience? 

Thunderclash—another person with command experience—not only sick (not unusual for him) but secured behind a locked door, away from assistance should he need it (very, very unusual for anyone…) 

Velocity gone. Hoist, a nurse, the only medical staff remaining. All the medical files password-protected by a password unknown to him, the Chief Medical Officer. He hadn’t gotten a memo about enhanced security measures in the medbay. He’d checked his comms and his mail. 

First Aid curled his hands into fists. 

The _facts_ told him something was wrong. Whether he wanted it to be or not. When he set aside his emotions about Pharma and Getaway and looked at the situation objectively, he knew there was a problem on board the _Lost Light_. 

And this time there would be no Ratchet swooping in to save everyone. Ratchet was far away, looking for Drift. First Aid wondered if he’d ever find him. The galaxy was a big place and First Aid wouldn’t blame Drift if he decided he didn’t want to be found. 

But First Aid was the Chief Medical Officer now. 

It was _his_ turn to solve the mystery and save everyone. 


	27. Anode and Swerve, Prank War:  Lug

Anode and Swerve, Prank War: Lug 

Lug felt a little guilty for tipping off the prank war. 

It had started with two rubber turborats. She’d bought them from a vendor on Troja Major, because she’d known how much Anode liked a good practical joke. Her original intention had been to purchase just one, to “get” Anode with. Except that the vendor had been offering a two-for-one special. With a deal like that, why not take the second? 

Except…what to do with it? 

She’d put the first turborat in Anode’s personal effects, just like she’d planned, and the second she’d dropped into an engex mug that she was pretty sure belonged to Swerve. Swerve seemed to her like the kind of guy who’d get a good laugh out of a practical joke. 

Then she’d entered into recharge, ensuring that she was nowhere around when the chaos kicked off. 

What Lug didn’t realize until much later was that Swerve had yelled very loudly in front of a large group of people when he’d discovered his turborat, and that one of the people in that large group had been Velocity. She’d immediately snagged the rubber turborat in the hopes of pranking Nautica with it. 

The end result? Swerve and Anode both thought “their” rat was the ONLY rat. Meaning, both Swerve and Anode were convinced that the other had started the prank war. Meaning that as innocent victims of the other’s undeserved provocation, there was really only one way to respond. 

At first, Lug had enjoyed sitting back and watching the fireworks as Swerve and Anode enlisted others into their comedic duel. Back on the _Lost Light_ , the rivalry would’ve been hilarious. 

Back on the _Lost Light_ , the prank war would also have served another purpose: distracting Anode from thoughts of “acquiring” things she had no right to. Lug admitted that Anode’s skills had kept the two of them fueled, but she also knew her conjunx well enough to know that scamming wasn’t something Anode could just turn off. She scadged whatever she could _because_ she could, and sometimes that caused problems. 

Lug _liked_ the mechs on the _Lost Light_. She wanted them to like her. And, in a more practical sense, she didn’t want to end up homeless yet _again_. That meant keeping Anode under control by diverting her impulses into a harmless prank war. 

Yeah, back on the _Lost Light_ , this would have been a good idea. 

The problem was that Skip was a lot smaller than the _Lost Light_. Everyone was already irritable from being crammed into such a tight space. And when tempers flared, there was nowhere to go to cool down and have some private time. 

On second thought, Lug should have realized this really wasn’t the best place for a prank war. Unfortunately, there was no taking back what she’d started. 

Lug stretched out her hands behind her back and felt something squishy. She turned around and saw a turborat’s optics glittering at her from on top of an exposed pipe. 

She screamed. 

And out popped Velocity, giggling hysterically, and Lug recognized one of the rubber toys she’d bought on Troja Major. 

Lug supposed she had that coming. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This totally epic story is based on real events that definitely happened, Canadian Forces Base Borden, 1997. 
> 
> One rat on the chief admin officer's desk. One rat in the chief warrant officer's candy bowl. Me, placing them just before heading off on a survival exercise for three days in the woods, absolutely nowhere around when the prank war kicked off. The motor pool swiping one of the rats to get THEIR guys with, leaving only one rat in headquarters and admin vs training both certain the other side started it.


	28. Revelations on Mederi:  Nightbeat

Nightbeat wasn’t ready to be dead again. 

He supposed he ought to be relieved that the Afterspark was real. That what had happened to him on Gorlam Prime was not real death after all, but some kind of limbo state influenced by the Dead Universe and the tampering Nemesis Prime had done to his head. 

He’d wanted the Necrobot to reassure him that there was more to life after death than the cold, smothering oblivion he’d felt after Hardhead had shot him in the head. He’d been angry when he’d found out that Censere was just a Cybertronian like him—an old one, a powerful one, one with a vast array of advanced technology and a very strange hobby, but in the end, just a person and not a god at all. 

In the end, Censere gave Nightbeat a bit of hope. The hope that came with not knowing. And Nightbeat gave Censere a new mission. The reason that Roller and Anode were alive now. 

Nightbeat blinked. 

Roller and Anode weren’t alive now. They were just as dead as he was. As the whole Rod Squad were. 

And here he was, in the Afterspark, and he _still_ didn’t know what would happen when (or if) he ascended to the giant Matrix in the sky. Would the smothering nothingness snuff his spark, then? Or was there truly hope to be found there? 

For once in his life he was afraid to find out. 

Perhaps he’d just sit here in Limbo for the rest of time, where he would never have to feel the chill of oblivion ever again. 

Some life _that_ had been. 

He hadn’t found Luna-One. The _Lost Light_ did _that_ before Nightbeat even came on board. One of the three great mysteries solved, and he hadn’t been there. 

He hadn’t found the Ark, either. Galvatron had. Nightbeat had been right there in the Dead Universe and he hadn’t found the Ark. 

And a small group of his crewmates had returned from the Functionist Universe all a-twitter about what Rung turned into. There was the third mystery, solved. Again he’d been so close. Again he’d been absent for the big reveal. 

But Ratchet had been skeptical. The bit on Rung’s drill-tank mode had been mounted by the Functionist Council. If Rung truly turned into a drill tank, surely he’d come with his own bit? His own treads? Rung’s alt in no way functioned as a drill, or a tank, without considerable modification. 

There was hope in the not knowing. 

Nightbeat thought Ratchet was on to something, there. It would be like him turning into a car with no wheels. Or Anode turning into an airplane without wings. It was very rare—and always considered a medical problem—when a Cybertronian came into being with so many missing parts that their alt modes couldn’t function. 

If Rung was functional in his current state, then he had to do something, just the way he was. 

_Maybe he really is what the Functionists said,_ whispered a voice in Nightbeat’s head. _Maybe he really is just an ornament._

_Or someone so tragically deformed that his alt mode isn’t anything at all._

Nightbeat looked down and saw a little crystal on the ground. As he bent over to pick it up, he saw another, not far away. He knew what these were. They were Rung’s crystals. 

Rung said that his function was to make those little crystals. Photonic crystals. The crystals that stored the sparks of the constructed-cold mechanisms. The crystals that held them stable as trapped light, until they could be put in bodyshells. The sparks that had been bled from the Matrix itself. 

Nightbeat picked up the second crystal. Then a third. Then a fourth. He followed a trail of photonic crystals and as he gathered them, his mind raced. 

Rung himself hadn’t figured it out after all. 

Because Rung was making these crystals in his robot mode. His alt was still useless. Unless… 

These crystals were raw shards. Unrefined. Loose. Could Rung’s alt be some kind of machine, like a jeweler’s lathe or the tools of a watchmaker? 

But what would such a machine do? What did you make out of photonic crystals? 

Nightbeat lifted his gaze to the giant Matrix in the sky and realized the hope of not knowing was nothing next to the revelation of discovery. 


	29. Prepare, Confront, Repel:  Adaptus & Pharma

Prepare, Confront, Repel: Adaptus & Pharma 

Adaptus had been plotting and planning for millions of years. 

Not that his “children”—the Cybertronian civilization—were grateful for his hard work. His entire life he’d been called many things: utilitarian, inhumane, warmonger…the list went on. 

All he wanted was to see the Cybertronian race reach its fullest potential. 

Nobody ever advanced in peacetime. Peace made creatures lazy. They lolled about in their happiness and went nowhere. Some beings could be inspired by avarice, lust or envy, but all beings responded to fear, the great spur to progress. The terror of annihiliation made them wake up and work. When they were frightened, they were prepared to sacrifice. 

Adaptus was prepared to sacrifice, too. 

Adaptus did not feel badly about the people of Benzene, or about the victims of the Black Block Consortia, or about his countless experimental subjects he’d created on the path to developing the Infinites. He also did not feel badly about the civil war he’d started on Cybertron long ago, or the people he’d had to kill so that his work would proceed. He would take this collateral damage and count it cheap, if it enabled him to do what needed doing. 

He would defeat the Functionist Council, who would send his children into a millennia of stasis and decline, and in so doing he would spur newer and greater wars. His Infinites would revitalize the Cybertronian people. In time they would shape the galaxy in his image. 

But he needed a body of his own. A physical form in which to greet the threat. 

He’d wanted the blue one. Skids of Nova Cronum. The one who had come through Solomus’s portal into his mind. 

But Skids had escaped, and instead, Adaptus’s tendrils had found a corpse. No matter. He could refit a corpse for the role. 

It was rather a handsome corpse, all told. Adaptus had always liked wearing the sleek shapes of flyers. It had been a clever corpse, too, though the brain was quite sadly missing. But there were datafiles stored throughout the body, and an echo from the still-flickering spark. Adaptus could make use of the data that filtered between brain and spark. This medical data helped him ascertain how to refine his Infinites into perfection. 

When Adaptus spoke to his wayward children, he was wearing Pharma’s body. 

It amused him to see Solomus’s reaction. His imperial, half-mad brother now had to take orders from the shape of his former subordinate. But Solomus was always overreaching himself. He should make use of some of his own wisdom, and learn some humility. If he would not learn, Adaptus would have to teach him. 

Humiliating Solomus was worth the extreme effort he had to expend in order to control this body. It was so difficult for him to focus his thoughts. He kept getting distracted by the one called Pharma whispering in his mind. 

Pharma was clever and slippery, charming and ruthless. He wouldn’t lie quiet and still, like a dead mech ought to. Adaptus had to hammer him into submission. 

Adaptus thought he’d gotten the upper hand, but he was not prepared for his new frame’s reaction to the one they called Ratchet. 

_Particularly_ not as he was finally about to give Solomus his _final_ lesson. 

Long ago and far away he’d first approached Solomus with his plan, and Solomus had wavered before finally throwing his support behind Primus, Mortilus and Epistemius. Traitor. Solomus deserved to die and Adaptus had been surprised to discover just how much he enjoyed driving Pharma’s chainsaw through Solomus’s chest. He enjoyed it so much he didn’t want to be hasty. He wanted to savour this… 

_My beloved Ratchet…_

By Cybertron, but Pharma was _obsessed_ with this nobody, this _Ratchet_. Pharma’s will was almost Adaptus’s equal, and Pharma wanted Ratchet just as Adaptus thirsted for progress. Most of all, Pharma wanted Ratchet to be _impressed_. 

The wave of emotion was so strong that Adaptus found himself asking, despite himself, who Ratchet was. Perhaps if he killed Ratchet, Pharma would _shut up_. 

But he’d paused too long, and Solomus, though dying, was not yet dead. 


	30. What if God was One of Us?:  Rung

What if God Was One of Us?: Rung 

_Primus_ . 

Rung had long had the feeling that he’d forgotten many things. Old things. Important things. 

Never for an instant had he thought that he’d forgotten he was once a god. 

But that wasn’t exactly true, was it? He wasn’t a god in the conventionally understood sense of the term. Being the first of your kind did not automatically imbue you with supernatural powers. Indeed, very often the following generations improved on the earlier models. 

Yet Rung was the only one who could make photonic crystals. Who could build a Matrix. Or many Matrixes. 

And Rung had walked away from accidents that would have killed anyone else. Only the Infinites had self-healing abilities that could match his. 

In those long years when he’d been wondering what he turned into and what he was for, nobody—not Rung himself, not the Functionist Council, not any of the curious bystanders—had figured out what Rung could do. And there had been nobody since, born or built, who could create those crystals. 

So perhaps his was the power of a god after all. 

Still, to make _one_ Matrix required a considerable amount of energy and concentration. To make _three_ would be exhausting. 

And many of the Infinites had fallen in battle, proving that self-healing abilities could be overwhelmed if a mech took damage faster than he could repair it. 

To make _twelve_ Matrixes _…_

Perhaps even a god’s power had limits. 

Rung did not want to test those limits. Not now, when he’d only just rediscovered himself. When he had a whole group of friends around him. When he had an _amica endura_. 

Not now, when people were actually beginning to remember him. 

Yet it was because of those people that he knew he had to try. 

For all the other people in the universe too, of course, and yet when he thought about the Functionist Council’s planet running amok through the universe, subjugating everyone in its path, it was his friends that he thought of. How they would suffer under the rule of the Functionist Council. 

So Rung made twelve Matrixes. For his friends. 

His last thought was of Skids popping open the panel in his ceiling, reaching down to save him from the sparkeater. 

“Hey. Rung. It’s time to come with me.” 


	31. The End???

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I first started posting these vignettes for Lost Light Fest, I received questions and comments from a number of different people that made me realize just how much the characters had changed, learned and grown over the course of the series. 
> 
> Particularly those whose point of view vignettes took place near the beginning of the quest!
> 
> Thanks to user keirajo who suggested the crew should do one of those “before and after” write ups and user Skywinder as well…I can’t think of a better way to end this set of stories.
> 
> So, “The End” is everyone I wrote about for days 1-30, summarizing their thoughts and feelings at…the end.
> 
> (Continuity note: Lost Light 25 comes out a week after this last story was posted, so, we’ll see if canon contradicts anything I’ve written here.)

Ultra Magnus—Minimus Ambus—realized he had not made a huge mistake, after all. 

Dominus Ambus was gone, but he still had a family—everyone who’d come with him on the quest. 

* 

Rodimus now knew why he wasn’t the brightest spark, but that didn’t matter so much to him any more. Life wasn’t about being the brightest or the best or the smartest or the strongest or even the most beloved. He and his crew had solved the mystery of the Knights of Cybertron and saved the universe from the mad Functionist Council. And they’d done it together. 

That was enough. 

* 

Drift was no longer a Decepticon, nor was he a particularly good Autobot, but he could stop looking for a place to belong. He was with Ratchet now. 

There was no point searching for something he’d already found. 

* 

Crankcase knew already that Swerve was going to get invited to every party Misfire threw from now until the end of time. It didn’t even faze him. If Crankcase could get used to having Grimlock around, he could get used to anyone. 

* 

Rewind was not the same person as the host of “Let’s Rewire Rung’s Brain,” but he still collected zones of influence. He just wasn’t thinking about them, or about Prowl, when he recorded Ratchet and Drift’s announcement. 

* 

Cyclonus held Tailgate’s hand in his and, for the first time in millions of years, realized that he was spending more time thinking about the future than about the past. He felt young again. 

* 

Half his body in the far past. Half his body in the far future. It was a hideous end, but even so, it was as close to peace as Overlord had ever come. 

* 

If anyone had ever said to Ratchet that someday he would be a Matrix bearer, he would have scoffed and told them such a job would never fall to a skeptic such as himself. 

Drift was never going to let him hear the end of this. 

* 

Tailgate held an open Matrix and realized that being a Matrix bearer was like having super powers – a notable accomplishment, to be sure, but somehow Tailgate didn’t value being important _in general_ nearly as much as he valued being important to one person in particular. 

* 

Rung’s treatment notes about Skids were consigned to oblivion, so among the crew, only Chromedome ever knew why Skids had called himself “scum.” 

Chromedome kept it to himself. 

* 

grindXhouse’s Galactic Gaming Network account was purged for inactivity. 

* 

The Matrix wasn’t a magical talisman. It was an energy receptacle made by his therapist, nothing more. 

But the act of opening it had given Whirl a sudden, inexplicable, incomprehensible desire to live. 

Whirl wasn’t sure he liked that. It was _weird_ , and like all strange things, a little scary. 

But Whirl liked a challenge, and he never had learned to back down. 

So perhaps the Matrix was a gift from God after all…if God was an old, scrawny therapist who’d looked at Whirl and seen someone worth saving. 

* 

_Are you happy?_

Brainstorm didn’t know if he was going to be able to accomplish _happy_ in this lifetime. 

But as Perceptor took his hand, he decided he was sure going to try. 

* 

“Who’s “Tarn?” the alien asked. 

“Oh,” Functionist Universe Glitch replied. “Not who, _what._ It’s a city on Cybertron.” 

* 

Riptide and Swerve were watching one of Swerve’s favourite comedies when a weird thought crossed Riptide’s mind. 

_That one actor guy sounds really familiar. In fact, he kind of reminds me of a holoavatar. Someone I know…_

Then he figured it out. 

Riptide wasn’t the tightest nut on the wheel, but he knew enough to keep his big mouth shut. 

* 

Being friends with Nautica meant a certain willingness to overlook her awkwardness, and enough trust to be able to tell her, plainly, with words, when she crossed boundaries without noticing. 

For a moment on Troja Major, Velocity had feared that her friendship with Nautica would be over. Nautica’s grief had blinded her, not only to reason, but to the effects of her actions on everyone around her. She wanted to help Skids so much that she didn’t care who else she hurt. 

Except that in the end, she hadn’t been able to sacrifice her friendship with Velocity after all. 

Velocity had wished she’d had more faith. She’d know better in future. Nautica might be awkward and oblivious to boundaries, but she was a deeply loyal friend. 

* 

Misfire watched Grimlock chatting with Thunderclash, and felt a strange tugging on his spark. He was happy and sad all at once, which made no sense. Happy that Grimlock had rediscovered himself. Sad that Grimlock didn’t need him all the time any more. 

Then Misfire felt someone nudge him in the ribs. 

“Drink?” Swerve asked. 

Misfire felt a smile coming to his lips. Grimlock might be establishing his own life, now, but the universe had finally brought Misfire his true soulmate. Hells, they’d opened a Matrix together. 

“Sure.” Misfire scooped up the glass that Swerve offered him. “What’s in it?” 

“A mix of Kremzeek energy beverage and Nightmare Fuel.” 

Misfire glared at Swerve over the rim of the glass. “Do you think drinking this is a good idea?” 

“No, which is why I need someone else who’ll do it with me.” 

Misfire grinned. “Cheers.” 

* 

  
Ravage only had strength for three final words. 

He wished he’d had the ability to speak to Soundwave one last time. He settled for projecting his thoughts as hard as he could, hoping that somewhere, somehow, Soundwave would sense them. It was likely impossible, over a distance so vast, but Soundwave’s abilities were truly unique. If nothing else, the thought that Soundwave might be reminded one last time how much Ravage cared for him brought Ravage some comfort. 

He saved his three words for his other loved one. The one who was at his side. 

“Don’t…change…back…” 

* 

Swerve sniffed and rubbed at his optics. Endings always made him weepy. 

He still had the rest of his life to look forward to, of course. 

But if…on the off chance… _if_ he were a fictional character in someone else’s story, that story might very well be in its epilogue. After all, they’d solved the mystery of the Knights of Cybertron, they’d saved the universe, they’d grown and changed as people, and they’d made a lot of friends along the way. 

Swerve wondered what kind of story he might be in next. 

* 

Atomizer had been right not to trust Getaway. And wrong to let his loyalty override his ethics. 

His last reget. 

His final thought. 

* 

Now that he knew he was able to feel guilt, Deathsaurus found himself feeling it more and more as of late. 

His Warworld was quiet. Too quiet. He told himself it was because the majority of the crew were in recharge, but he knew in his spark it was also because many of the hab suites were now unoccupied. Their occupants’ bodies had been left behind on Necroworld, but their names were inscribed all around him on the walls of the bridge—the heart of the Warworld. 

Deathsaurus had relieved the night picket and taken watch himself. He would not be sleeping regardless. 

He looked out the viewscreen at the darkness in between the stars and thought about his latest crime of omission. Benzene. He’d looked and looked for Nickel but neither he nor the rest of his crew had found her. When their supplies ran short, Deathsaurus had reluctantly ordered his crew back to the Warworld. 

Their hunting had kept them fueled, but little more. They’d have to find enough to stockpile before they could go back to look for Nickel again. Deathsaurus told himself he _would_ go back once they had fuel to spare again. He couldn’t starve his crew to search for someone who might well be dead. 

He knew he was doing the right thing. 

But he felt guilty regardless. 

Deathsaurus curled his tail around his body and hugged his wings against his chest. 

And then the Warworld’s communications console lit up with an incoming message. 

“Deathsaurus?” 

Deathsaurus raised his head, wondering if he was dreaming as he reared up on his hind legs and accepted the call. “Nickel?” 

Nickel’s face appeared on the viewscreen. “Have I got a story for you.” 

Deathsaurus felt the guilt fall from his neck like a stone. 

* 

Prowl thought of Chromedome, and Tarantulas, and wondered if he was really one of _those_ after all. Did he still want a _conjunx endura_ , after everything he’d done, everything he’d survived? Who would want the likes of _him_? 

His datapad chimed with an incoming message. 

Cerebros. Cerebros and Prowl had gotten to know each other a bit better on Luna-One, and now Cerebros must think they were friends or something, because Cerebros had been contacting him rather often as of late. Sometimes it was just a funny meme or a picture of what Cerebros had been up to with Fortress Maximus and Red Alert since Prowl had left. Sometimes it was a question about what Prowl was doing in his free time, though Prowl wasn’t sure why Cerebros cared, and… 

Suddenly, Prowl understood. 

For someone who could calculate eighty-two possible outcomes per second, it had taken Prowl a long time to figure it out. 

* 

Megatron held a Matrix he knew he would never be able to open. Ironically, Getaway had been right. There was no absolution for the likes of him. 

Redemption was an illusion. The scales would never be balanced. All he could do was live the rest of his life doing the best he could, not in the hopes of earning forgiveness, but simply helping his fellow beings for its own sake. 

What help was he now, when no amount of force he could exert would pry open this Matrix and save the universe? 

“Megatron!” Rodimus called, and Megatron realized he’d been indulging his old bad habits yet again. 

He’d been trying to pull the Matrix apart by sheer power and will. 

Instead, Rodimus—undisciplined, iconoclastic, _glorious_ —took one end of the Matrix in his remaining hand and the other in his _teeth_ . 

Unorthodox, like everything else Rodimus attempted. 

But it opened for Rodimus Prime. 

* 

Terminus died in the cold grey light of dawn, standing with his back against the wall of the old Senate building, facing a Dreadbot firing squad. 

The Council had condemned him to public execution in an attempt to hurt Megatron. It would fail so long as Megatron had finally learned his lesson about attachment. 

That was no longer in Terminus’s power to change. Perhaps it never had been. 

But the Council’s desire to provoke Megatron had given Terminus this chance to die a martyr. He hoped his death would inspire the rebels to fight all the harder. 

He had never cared much for religion—it was too often used as a tool to coerce the oppressed to accept their fate—so he would not call his final words a prayer. 

“Long live the revolution,” Terminus said. 

* 

Nautica received a message in her inbox with a picture attached. The Curator, holding an infant. The baby looked like a human child, but she was disproportionately large, and she had a Decepticon insignia on her face. 

Nautica would have thought the worst of Agonizer—the _Curator_ —had Grimlock and Misfire not already told her about the Firstborn. Any nefarious doings in the Firstborn’s creation had been committed by Scorponok, not the Curator. 

Nautica would have to show the ScAvengers how the Firstborn was doing. 

But first, she opened the message. 

_Seeking recommendations on guides to parenting. Willing to trade historical antiquities in exchange for help being a good father._

* 

Those four words served First Aid well in his career as Chief Medical Officer. 

_What would Ratchet do?_

* 

Lug found not one, but two rubber turborats falling out of her alt mode when she changed shape. 

* 

Another great mystery: would Nightbeat ever be able to tell the living what he had discovered on the other side? 

* 

New Cybertron discovered the kind of progress that can only come about in peacetime. 

* 

Rewind had hesitated at first to edit the work of his other self. Chromedome convinced him to finish the film properly. 

“Little Victories” was released to resounding commercial success. 

Rung—and Skids—were remembered. 

* 

It never ends. 


End file.
